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UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 



SOME LESSONS 



FROM THE 



Parable of The Sower 



Parable of Growth 



Law of The Harvest 






BUFFALO 
ULBRICH & KINGSLEY 

1886 




3fCs 



■t 



Copyright, 1886, 
By J. P. Egbert. 



Tbe Library 
of Cong i 



WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



A pastor often feels with pain the 
weakness of his work, and seeks to find 
some means to increase its value. 

It is with this desire to strengthen a 
consciously defective ministry that these 
studies of "the Word of the Kingdom" 
have been prepared. 

First delivered as sermons in Calvary 
Church, they were then written out from 
the stenographer's notes, and are published 
as nearly as possible as they were delivered. 

The pleasure of their preparation has 
been increased by the thought that perhaps 



PREFACE. 

they may carry true seed to some " good 
and honest " heart, or help the growth 
to fuller harvest of seed already sown. 
Should this be accomplished, it may justify 
the addition of one more to the many 
books that ask for our attention. If it 
find no ministry of helpfulness, it will at 
least do no harm to those who take the 
time to read it. 

As we are all stewards of the truth, do 
not forget to ask for the blessing of the 
God of all truth upon whatever in this 
little book is according to His Word. 

Study of Calvary Church. 

Mav, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Teaching by Parables I 

The Parable of the Sower 37 

The First Class, " By the Wayside " 49 

The Second Class, " On the Rock " 65 

The Third Class, " Among Thorns " 83 

The Fourth Class, " In Good Ground " 106 

1 - Take Heed How Ye Hear " 123 

Parable of Growth 134 

The Law of the Harvest ', 174 



" the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee 

wise unto salvation." — II Tim., 3: 15. 



Ask not for a sign from Heaven, 

In the gospel of thy Saviour, life as well as light, is given. 
Ever looking unto Jesus, all his glory thou shalt see, 
From thy heart the veil be taken, and the Word be clear to 
thee." — Be Wette. 



' Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known 
Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, 
Warning, approving, true and wise and pure, 
Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none! 
By thee the mystery of life is read; 
The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, 
The myths and parables of the primal years, 
Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted 
Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, 
And in the soul's vernacular, express 
The common law of simple righteousness." 

— /. G. Whittier, 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 

" Why speakest thou to them in para- 
bles?" 

This question of the disciples suggests 
a line of thought which may be profitable 
to us as an introduction to the parables of 
our Lord, especially to the Parable of 
the Sower. 

The great Teacher did not use parables 
for their beauty, nor chiefly for their power 
as illustrations. They are rather hints of 
something deeper ; surface indications of 
richer ore beneath, for which we must 
dig watchfully and thoroughly. And we 
may be sure that parables meant more 
to Christ than they do to us. As the 
botanist walking through the forest sees a 
variety and wealth of which the woodman 
never dreams ; or as the anthropologist, 
looking at the common customs of men, 
sees a far-reaching history with a wealth of 



2 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

meaning that is never more than a surface 
suggestion to the mass of men ; so the 
Christ, " by whom all things consist/' sees 
nature's secrets in all their infinite depth 
of meaning. 

Where we see the conflicts that keep 
nature's surface in agitation, He sees the 
perfect concord reigning deep within. 
Behind the infinite variety that puzzles 
us, and the struggle of forces that bewilders 
us, He reads the eternal purpose of God 
blending all into the most perfect harmony. 
His pure eyes see a wealth to which our 
eyes are blind, and His mighty hand draws 
it forth for the world's instruction. Divine 
Himself, He is conscious of the divine 
knowledge and beauty written in with 
every scroll of nature. So that where all 
looks dark and deadly to us, He sees a 
divine truth, the truth of Jehovah's certain 
purpose, relieving with its own glory all 
the seeming defects and contradictions of 
earth. It adds to the value as well as to 
the beauty of the gospel message, that the 
Christ Teacher wove it into such close 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 3 

relations with all the works of God, among 
which we must delve for our daily life. 

The Teacher who knew what was in man, 
knew also what was in nature, and taught 
us how to take more than a mere glance 
at the vast gallery of truth and beauty 
through which we are passing. He taught 
us to look for Jehovah's thought in every 
problem of nature, and to listen for the 
Fathers voice of love and wisdom in every 
incident of life. He would have us search 
every nook of earthly life for the foot- 
prints of divine purpose, for the incarna- 
tion of divine thought, for the illustration 
of divine truth. To Him all things in the 
heavens and the earth, in the fields, the sea 
and the air, were filled with the thoughts 
of the eternal Mind, and He interpreted 
them into current language for circulation 
through all the years of human life. 
These truths He would force into the con- 
sciousness of men, and by them arouse us 
to an earnest effort to reach His own high 
standard for us. 

On the head, the arm, the foot, you 



4 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

touch the throbbing pulse, and think of 
the heart that beats its life-strokes into 
every part of the body. As the divine 
Teacher touches the pulses of truth, beat- 
ing their mysterious harmonies everywhere 
throughout all life, He points our minds to 
the great Unity, who, like an eternal 
heart, sends a mighty intimation of His 
plan and presence throbbing through all 
the veins of nature. Thus He would lead 
us to search beyond the discord for the 
eternal harmony toward which He is lead- 
ing us. 

You may thus at last learn that 

"All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; 
All discord, harmony not understood ; 
All partial evil, universal good." — Pope. 

Without doubt, he is the richest heir of 
God who has most familiarity with the 
divine meanings of nature ; and that 
lover of nature is truest and happiest who 
can discern in her teachings the truths of 
God's implanting. As such a student 
looks on nature's problems, he is often 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 5 

forced to ask the question of the angel in 
Milton :— 

"What if earth 
Be but the shadow of Heaven and things therein, 
Each to other like more than on earth is thought ? " 

Certainly the Master used the earthly 
to teach us of things heavenly. For how- 
ever others may read nature, Christ teaches 
that this world is a divine thought, God's 
world ; and that men are the highest part 
of that thought, a copy of the Divine 
Thinker ; and that many of the mysteries 
that fall like shadows across the world are 
but intimations of Jehovah's presence. 
Earth's treasures of truth are being dis- 
covered more and more richly every year 
by this eager, busy age, and science has 
given us many keys that unlock her secrets, 
yet her meaning is continually misinter- 
preted and her instructions misapplied. 
As we rejoice over earth's wealth and 
beauty, we do not always realize how true 
it is that 

44 The earth is crammed with Heaven, 

And every bush afire with God." 

2 



6 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

Men are constantly saying the world is 
full of prophecies and man is full of hopes, 
but where is the promise of their fulfill- 
ment? The Word, the supreme Thought 
incarnate, comes to lighten man's dark- 
ness, to lift the world's hopes still higher 
by the divine assurance, to point man's 
limited, hindered, heavy-laden life to the 
rest of perfection, the unhindered growth 
of eternal life. Though all the world 
groaneth and travaileth until now, the 
time of rest comes rapidly, when all the 
hidden things of the universe will reveal 
their meaning. When we shall live amid 
great thoughts and holy purposes, amid 
our highest hopes fulfilled, and higher 
hopes begotten. When the natural and 
the spiritual shall build each other into 
symmetry, and by Christ's teaching shall 
reveal each other to the instruction and 
the comfort of all who listen to His 
voice. 

The Master ever interprets nature as 
speaking the truth of God. The moun- 
tain points to the sure refuge in Jehovah's 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. J 

strength and protection, the rock illus- 
trates His abiding salvation. The lily in 
its beauty, and the birds in the free air 
above, point to God's providing care. The 
golden grain drops into the fertile earth 
and springs up to a more abundant life, 
and the seeds of divine truth fall into the 
" good and honest " heart only to spring 
up into the abundance of eternal life. 

"Goto the earth," says Job, "and it 
shall teach thee," and the Psalmist contin- 
ues the song, " for the earth is the Lord's 
and the fulness thereof." (Ps. 24: 1.) "O 
Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! in 
wisdom hast Thou made them all : the 
earth is full of Thy riches." (Ps. 104: 24.) 
God has summoned all the resources of 
the whole realm of nature to aid in the 
upbuilding of man ; and from the open 
pages of this visible universe Christ has 
taught us to read the truths of the unseen 
and eternal world. He so mingled the 
visible world about Him with the unseen 
world of His promise as to make the 
unseen things more real by association 



8 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

with things we knew. He read such 
divine truth from the suggestions of nature, 
and made the present mean so much by 
its relations with the eternal future ; so 
unveiled that future by showing the real 
meaning of the present, and so rifted the 
cloud that separated them, as to make 
them forever stand forth as to-day and 
to-morrow of the same immortal life. Thus 
teaching us that the present is the parable 
of the unbounded future, and only as we 
rightly read the days that are, can we 
understand the years that shall be. 

How patiently Christ battled with the 
world's darkness, shining like the rising 
sun against the world's clouds and fogs of 
sin and error, striving to make Heaven's 
glorious light scatter every human dark- 
ness. Earnestly, longingly, did He labor 
to fill men's minds with thoughts of God, 
and put into their souls His own high aim 
of life. The Parable of the Sower sug- 
gests the manner in which the world 
receives His earnest teaching. 

The disciples appear to have been sur- 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 9 

prised by this parable. Not so much that 
He spake in parables, but that He used 
parables at this time and to this people. 
They are not very sure that they under- 
stand His meaning in the parable just 
uttered ; but if they do, why does this 
Teacher, so earnest and so wise, speak 
such a parable to such an audience ? It 
is not an illustration of God's love and 
mercy. It is not an exhibition of Christ's 
divine mission to our fallen race. As one 
has said, " He preached not to the peo- 
ple, but at them, or over their heads." No 
comforting truth of revelation, but a dis- 
couraging, heart-searching analysis of the 
characters of His hearers. It was not 
a gospel message, but an uncomfortable, 
depressing statement of how the gospel 
would be received. 

That listening assembly was made up 
of a few who believed, and a multitude 
who were either indifferent, save from 
mere curiosity, or were prejudiced against 
Him, some even hating Him with a read- 
iness to kill Him. Why did not Christ 



IO PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

use this opportunity for a parable illus- 
trating the grandeur of His mission, or 
the infinite greatness of His Father's love? 
How appropriate the parable of the " Prod- 
igal Son/' or the " Lost Sheep," or the 
" Pearl of Great Price." Instead of any 
vindication of Himself, or any propitia- 
tion of His hearers, He speaks to them a 
parable that, if understood, will discourage 
many, and rouse more to wrath that may 
seek to compass His own destruction. 
Why lose this fine opportunity for a ser- 
mon on the great truths of God's heavenly 
kingdom, or an earnest presentation of 
the Father's infinite love and mercy ? How 
little we see of things that are clear to the 
Master's vision ! 

The disciples might easily have been 
deceived, as we often are, into thinking 
that the multitude would press into the 
heavenly kingdom if only the gospel were 
appropriately preached unto them. These 
eager followers, who yet judge by appear- 
ances, dread to hear a word that might 
drive away the large audiences, or check 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. I I 

their enthusiasm. But Christ preached 
not merely to the senses. That audi- 
ence was much better understood by Christ 
than by the disciples, and from His perfect 
knowledge of the human heart He would 
take a lesson for the continual use of His 
disciples, and of all who preach His 
word. 

The crowd was very great, " There was 
gathered unto him a great multitude," 
coming " out of every city," along that 
thickly populated lake-shore, and filled 
with eagerness to hear the wonderful words 
of the new prophet. The enthusiasm 
would have gladdened the heart of any 
human teacher, yet Christ speaks to the 
crowd a parable that carries a sad strain 
in almost every sentence. The disciples 
were disappointed, yet they were curious 
to know their Master's purpose. 

" Why speakest thou to them in para- 
bles ?" u What might this parable mean ?" 

They had yet but little experience of 
their Teachers ways, and were only begin- 
ning to understand His mission among 



12 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

them. They had not learned, and how 
few of us have learned, to wait patiently 
with a sure confidence that He who spake 
as never man speaks, has spoken with 
unerring wisdom. 

He knows that in a few days, when He 
forces the real nature of His mission on 
their dull hearts, that crowd will scatter to 
all distances from Him, some even to do 
their part in hastening His condemnation. 
He sees the whole field of living souls 
before Him divided into the four classes 
He describes in the parable, and in deep 
sadness utters what He so certainly knows 
and so keenly feels. How few are the 
real members of His divine kingdom, and 
what a crowd of eager seekers after sen- 
sations ! 

The Saviours reply tells how He under- 
stood the question of His little school of 
disciples. " Therefore speak I to them 
in parables; because seeing they see not, 
and hearing they hear not, neither do they 
understand." Over that soil He has sown 
the pure seed of divine truth, yet all their 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 1 3 

thoughts are carnal. "In them is fulfilled 
the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith y By 
hearing ye shall hear, and shall not under- 
stand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not 
perceive : for this people s heart is waxed 
gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, 
and their eyes they have closed; lest at any 
time they should see with their eyes, and 
hear with their ears, and should under- 
stand with their heart, and should be con- 
verted, and I should heal them." They 
see and hear, but their hearts are become 
so gross and foul that they cannot under- 
stand, or they would be converted. What 
a fearful sentence to pronounce upon any 
class of human beings, and yet how true ! 
He sees in that crowd the fulfillment of 
the prophecy of Isaiah, and He prophesies 
a result soon to be apparent to all. The 
enthusiasm is at its height, and avast mul- 
titude is eager to make Him king ; but in 
a few days He will enter Capernaum, and 
to the same multitude, with increase, He 
will preach that wonderful sermon on the 
Bread of Life, after which the whole Gal- 



14 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

ilean revival seemed to collapse in almost 
total failure. 

In this parable of the Sower, Christ 
says to all in that crowd who understand 
him, "Examine yourselves, and make sure 
of your own position, for in a few days I 
will pour a flood of light upon the real 
truth I came to teach, that will blind those 
who are still filled with the gross darkness 
of ignorance and unbelief ; and at the 
same time I will also make clearer the 
boundaries of My heavenly kingdom — one 
class of you will be within the kingdom, 
many classes without. To which class do 
you belong ? " 

To His disciples He would say — "judge 
not by appearance, but learn well the les- 
son of this parable, for it is the judgment 
of omniscience upon every audience you 
will have to teach." Their own high, and 
not very clear, expectations might easily 
lead them to put too great a value upon 
the eagerness and enthusiasm of the 
increasing crowd. He bids them look 
deeper. For their instruction, He analyzes 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 1 5 

the very hearts of that listening congre- 
gation, and shows how few of them are 
" good and honest" soil in which truth can 
grow. It is an infinitely sad thought. 
Not only that many of them will not re- 
ceive the truth, but cannot. Their hearts 
are too barren, or too thorny. They have 
lost their capacity to receive the truth with 
understanding. Was this more true then 
than now ? Are there not multitudes now 
whose hearts are so gross as to make it 
impossible for spiritual truth to enter and 
abide ? 

No longer can those who catch the 
meaning of the parable be entirely unmind- 
ful of the high and unselfish purpose of 
their teacher ; nor can they be altogether 
blind to the grossness and insincerity of 
the great congregations that listened to 
Him. 

His interpretation of the parable is an 
evident revelation of His own omniscience, 
and a clear exhibition of His position as 
a teacher from God. At the same time it 
is an impressive lesson to His disciples 



1 6 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

upon the great necessity for the possession 
of a right spirit in order to understand all 
parables, and rightly judge all congrega- 
tions. The Parable of the Sower has been 
to all Christ's followers an important, 
though sometimes very discouraging, les- 
son. The hard experiences of centuries 
have vividly illustrated and proven true 
these words of Him who " knew what was 
in man," and no longer can a teacher of 
truth speak to any audience without the 
thought that here, too, are the four classes 
of hearers. It is the handwriting of God 
upon every assembly listening to the gos- 
pel message. A few will hear the truth 
and treasure it in good and honest hearts, 
but the other classes are the more numer- 
ous. " Having ears they hear not." All 
who hear are modified by the truth, but 
how few are sanctified by it! Is it not 
strange and sorrowful that so few receive 
the truth into hearts all ready for its full- 
est growth, when the reward of knowing 
God is eternal life ? 

Many loudly-applauded philanthropic 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. I J 

schemes to reform the world have had a sud- 
den success that deceived men into a tem- 
porary belief that they were divinely true, 
but their false interpretation of God, and 
their blindness to the narrowness, the hard- 
ness, and the thorny condition of our sinful 
hearts, have caused them to pass away as 
visions in the night, leaving the world still 
unreformed. But no follower of Christ, 
however enthusiastic for the world's re- 
demption, can for a moment leave out of 
account the sin-disturbed vision, and sin- 
deadened ears of our degenerate souls. 
He ever remembers that "the servant is 
not greater than his Lord" even in this, 
and if tbey would not hear the Master 
they are not likely to hear the disciple. If 
from the hand of the divine Sower the 
seed fell into but few hearts that were 
"honest and good," the disciple may expect, 
without discouragement, that while he 
must "sow beside all waters," only here 
and there will there be a harvest. 

Yet all true disciples of Christ work for 
His kingdom under the dominance of the 



1 8 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

ever present hope of its full success. "Thy 
kingdom come," is their earnest prayer, 
but it is also a loyal acceptance of their 
Masters prophecy that "the gospel of the 
kingdom shall be preached in the whole 
world." It is not their dream, it is not 
any mere scheme of reformation, but a 
steady, determined sowing of the "word 
of the kingdom," the fruit of which is 
ever good, and which would make this 
world all fruitful of heavenly graces if all 
hearts were but "good and honest." It is 
the seed of love, the foundation of all true 
and abiding philanthropy. Yet, if there 
were no promise of success, but only the 
command to sow, every true disciple would 
work with all diligence because it is the 
will of his Lord. 

The disciples very evidently feel that 
Christ has thoughts deeper than the mere 
literal meaning of the parable, and they 
ask for the interpretation. He answers 
with a very suggestive question, " Know ye 
not this parable, how then will ye know 
all parables?" What, not understand so 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 1 9 

simple a parable as this? How then will 
ye understand the deeper parables which 
teach of Jehovah's nature and man's eter- 
nal future ? This may be the meaning of 
His question, but does it not go deeper? 
Does it not reach down to the innermost 
spirit of every listener ? The Christ might 
stand before this congregation and say, " I 
show you the Father?" and we answer, 
"only show us the Father and it sufficeth 
us." "What," he says, "have I been so 
long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known Me ? He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father." The fault is not in 
Him, it is not in God; it is in our hearts. 
The "pure in heart shall see God." Like- 
ness is essential to perfect understand- 
ing. No man can have any clear insight 
into that with which he has no sym- 
pathy. 

As Hartley Coleridge says : " Sympathy 
is the ground of mutual understand- 
ing." Or as Wordsworth so beautifully 
expresses it : " You must love Him ere to 
you He seem worthy of your love." 



20 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

" Whate'er we look on, at our side 
Be charity — to bid us think, 
And feel, if we would know." 

Irving, in his Columbus, Bk. 7, ch. 1, 
first paragraph, gives a perfect illustration 
of this necessity of sympathy in order to 
understanding. It is a necessity always, 
but especially in spiritual matters. 

The doubting Thomas cannot see the 
glorious meaning of the Christ life ; but 
the new-born Thomas bows 'humbly, and 
with the very heart says, " My Lord and 
my God." 

Apply this to that audience listening to 
the parable as Christ first utters it. Gross 
of heart, stubborn and blind, how could 
they understand a spiritual parable? "Their 
mood is for revolution, but not of their 
own lives." They would make Jesus a 
king, but not in their souls, nor according 
to the idea of His spiritual kingdom. They 
are full of enthusiasm for a miracle- 
worker who can feed them with loaves and 
fishes, but where is their zeal for truth, 
or loving, patient endurance for right- 
eousness sake ? 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 2 1 

About one-half of Christ's earthly min- 
istry is gone. He has scattered the seeds 
of truth broadcast over many great audi- 
ences. In spring-time, when hearts were 
opened with need and expectation, with 
divine skill He had sown the good seed 
" beside all waters." Not in parables, but 
in plain speech. Not in similitudes, but 
in the concise, startling, enduring beati- 
tudes. His hearers saw His mighty deeds, 
but saw not their meaning or purpose. 
They heard His wonderful teachings, but 
caught not their life-giving value. " See- 
ing, they see not; hearing, they hear not." 
Now, as he wraps His thoughts in parable, 
those who understand may see the truth 
more clearly by the dress in which it is 
clothed, and in which those who have hard- 
ened themselves into grossness of heart 
may find their own judgment. Some went 
up into clearer light; the many went down 
into deeper darkness. Yet even as these 
" despisers of the word " went lower and 
lower, the familiar parable would cling to 
their memories, and might even yet chal- 



2 2 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

lenge their attention to its hidden truths. 
As Von Gerlach says: "A parable is like 
the pillar of cloud and fire, which turned the 
dark side to the Egyptians, the bright side 
to the people of the covenant; it is like 
a shell which keeps the precious kernel as 
well for the diligent as from the indolent." 
When they would not hear the plain warn- 
ings and commands, when through gross- 
ness of heart they could not take hold of 
His spiritual promises, Christ gave the 
divine message in parables in order that, 
if possible, some of them might even yet 
perceive the deeper meaning within and 
be saved. Christ does not abandon them 
when they reject His message, but contin- 
ues always to preach to them the word of 
life "And with many such parables spake 
He the word unto them, as they were able 
to hear it : and without a parable spake He 
not unto them; but privately to His own 
disciples He expounded all things." 

But may we not catch a glimpse of the 
feeling in the heart of the Teacher as He 
uttered this parable, and thus see still 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 23 

more clearly its deeper meaning? Com- 
plained of, upbraided, misunderstood ; 
selfish motives ascribed to His pure deeds , 
isolated, without sympathy, without the 
confidence of those He came to save; 
charged with crime by those for whom He 
would die ; sorrowing unto death with the 
knowledge of human sinfulness ; thus out 
of a heart so familiar with grief, He utters 
this parable. It was His omniscient view 
of the gigantic struggle now begun 
between truth from God and human sin- 
fulness. Is it any wonder that He spake 
this parable in sadness? This was His 
prophecy concerning the reception of the 
truth, and all the history of Christianity 
is the fulfillment of His word. His in- 
finite longing to save His people from the 
tyranny of sin, and from its final awful 
fruits; His immeasurable love for human 
souls ; His divine enthusiasm for the truth, 
could not dim His vision to the reality of 
the wilful rejection by men of His sub- 
limest efforts. 

Infinitely sad, yet certainly true, is this 



24 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

parable ; and as true to-day as when Christ 
stood in the boat on Galilee's lake so long 
ago And thus the record of Christ's own 
experience as a teacher became a proph- 
ecy of the experience of every teacher of 
truth so long as men remain the willing 
slaves of sin. 

With what meaning and power this par- 
able must have come to His disciples 
when, in later days, they tried to put spir- 
itual truths into sensual and selfish hearts ! 
They are to preach the gospel of love and 
peace to just such audiences as this now 
before the Saviour, and it is all important 
that they should know, not only the truth 
as it is represented in Jesus, but also the 
characters of their hearers, and the recep- 
tion the word of truth will meet. They 
are eager, believing followers, but as yet 
only half understanding the great mission 
for which their Teacher is preparing them. 
Even long after this they were sorely vexed 
and surprised at their own lack of success. 
How soon and how thoroughly they 
learned what needs no illustration now, 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 25 

that the hearts of men are not inclined 
towards the truth as it is revealed in 
Jesus ! 

The answer to the question of the dis- 
ciples may be further gathered from 
Christ's words in Mark 4,: 11. "Unto 
you it is given to know the mysteries of 
the kingdom of God : but to them that 
are without, all things are done in para- 
bles/' This suggests a definite design for 
parables in relation to the " Kingdom of 
God." To those within the kingdom, 
suggesting truth and illustrating it for 
their upbuilding; to those without the 
kingdom, leaving a possibility that in the 
imagery some soul may catch a view of 
the truth, and be led to fuller knowledge. 
Christ's great mission on earth was to 
establish this kingdom in all the hearts of 
men. They had revolted, and become 
subjects of another king, the " Prince of 
this world." They must be won back to 
their rightful Lord, reinstated in the king- 
dom of life. For this Christ lived and 
died. As a king He came into the world 



26 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

to destroy the works of the devil, and win 
back man's allegiance to Himself. The 
whole ministry of Christ was built about 
this one central idea of a kingdom. "The 
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." " Jesus 
came into Galilee preaching the gospel of 
the kingdom of God." " I must preach 
the kingdom of God to other cities also ; 
for therefore am I sent." That wonderful 
Sermon on the Mount was a partial exposi- 
tion of the law of this kingdom. He 
commissioned His disciples to "go preach, 
saying, the Kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand." To the "seventy," He said, " Say 
unto them, the Kingdom of God is come 
nigh unto you." And in all His. earthly 
ministry He never let go His kingly pre- 
rogative Even in lowliest service, He 
was kingly. He was king in the presence 
of Pilate, in the midst of the mob, in His 
suffering on the cross, in His promise to 
the dying thief, in His triumphant resur- 
rection, and in His regal ascension. He 
was a king in the splendor of His claims, 
in the grandeur of His promises, in the 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 2 J 

sublimity of His prophecies, in the right- 
eousness of His judgments, in the equity 
of His laws, in the vastness of His realm, 
in the countless multitude of His subjects. 
For what other king were ever such weap- 
ons forged as truth and love ? For what 
other sovereign have men displayed such 
exalted moral courage ? For what other 
" leader and commander" have so many 
thousands died with quiet heart and for- 
giving word ? What other king ever con- 
quered by patient love and won victories 
by dying? What other king was ever 
anointed of God a "leader and commander" 
to all people ? He was the very " King 
of kings." And the doctrine of a spir- 
itual kingdom was the one theme of His 
teaching. 

At this time when He is about to utter 
His first parable, when the enthusiasm is 
at the highest, and crowds were proclaim- 
ing Him king, we see a division work 
becoming apparent. While this work 
began at the very beginning of His min- 
istry, yet so marked was it at the time of 



28 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

this parable that many immediately went 
back and walked no more with Him. The 
truth had at last entered their minds that 
His kingdom was spiritual, a kingdom of 
regenerate character. 

He was gathering around Him a little 
band of true members of His kingdom, 
into whose minds He poured the wealth 
of His kingly teaching, which through 
them was to be scattered broadcast over 
the world. To this little inner circle, the 
first of the many that shall fill the earth, 
He spake directly, without any other veil 
to His deep meanings than the human 
words which conveyed them. These were 
loyal subjects, with hearts ready for the 
seed, with minds already subject to the 
laws of His spiritual kingdom, for Christ 
was a king in every life of this little army 
now being marshalled for the conquest of 
the world. Others might sit with His 
loyal disciples, but to them alone was He 
giving the invulnerable armor of His own 
graces, and the keen-edged sword of divine 
truth. 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 29 

" But to those without He spake in par- 
ablest 

The disciples saw that He made a dis- 
tinction between themselves and the mul- 
titude that crowded to hear His teach- 
ings, and they inquired of him the reason. 
Before giving them a direct reply, He lays 
down the principle on which His action 
is based. " Whosoever hath, to him shall 
be given, and he shall have more abun- 
dance, but whosoever hath not, from him 
shall be taken away even that he hath." 
Whoever possesses any truth, shows the 
ability to receive truth. Whoever does 
not possess, shows want of ability to 
receive. Whoever, by possession of the 
first truths of the kingdom, shows his fit- 
ness and ability to receive higher teachings, 
will receive abundance ; but he who has 
not received the beginning, cannot receive 
the completion. The man who rejects the 
spirit of the kingdom, is unprepared to 
understand its laws. 

Spiritual meanings are ever hidden from 
the hard-hearted and selfish, and revealed 



30 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

to those who are willing and able to receive 
them; while the highest truths are revealed 
to the true heart of faith, and always con- 
cealed from the careless and gross-hearted. 
That man whose heart possesses truth 
has a magnet within himself to which all 
truth is in some degree attracted. He has 
that in him which makes all that is true 
attractive to him, and with every new 
acquisition of truth there comes an increase 
of pleasure in its pursuit. When a man has 
a little information on any subject, every 
item concerning it is read with pleasure, 
and is naturally assimilated with the knowl- 
edge previously acquired. When the 
heart is not open to the dawning of the 
light, its later,- noonday beams will only 
dazzle and blind. 

But our Saviour had a further meaning. 
The soul that rejects His truth shall see 
going from him the very opportunity of 
hearing the plain, direct commands of 
Christ, and will hear them only in para- 
bles which he may interpret to his own 
condemnation. 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 3 1 

Christ had spoken plainly to all alike of 
His mission as a king. Some received the 
truth, and thus were prepared for a higher 
education in divine things. Others had 
so misused and abused their ability to 
receive spiritual truth that it is only cast- 
ing pearls before swine to preach the king- 
dom of heaven to them. Disuse or mis- 
use of their higher faculties had left them 
unable to see any meaning beyond the 
physical. The years of His earthly min- 
istry are few, and the causes of the world's 
reformation must all be put in motion. 
Shall He now continue to scatter seed on 
all alike ? He does not, but takes the few 
who were fitted by the possession of the 
first principles of the kingdom for a more 
rapid growth in this higher knowledge, 
into a closer relation with Himself, that He 
might teach them more fully the myster- 
ies of the kingdom of God. To them the 
Saviour will giye more and more abun- 
dantly of His rich gifts. To the multi- 
tude who had rejected this plain procla- 



32 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

mation of His mission, He will veil His 
meaning in parables. 

" They will not hear : therefore in judg- 
ment I speak to them in parables!' 

What is helpful truth to one is judgment 
to another. The Christian rejoices in the 
thought that there is a God who knoweth 
all things; while to the "wicked" the 
thought of Jehovah's omniscience is a 
terrible judgment. Christ had spoken 
tenderly and plainly to all concerning the 
beauties and glories of His kingdom. He 
had earnestly besought them to receive its 
sacred privileges and blessings. They 
had heard and rejected. They despised 
His truths when they saw that His king- 
dom was not of this world, and thus 
proved themselves unfit to be taken into 
that inner circle of truth-seekers who 
heard Him gladly. The higher truths and 
aspirations of the Christian life are always 
foolishness to one without the kingdom. 
The " Sermon on the Mount " would have 
been but pearls cast before swine to the 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 33 

crowd gathered at Sinai. Christ's truths 
were the revelation of Himself to the 
souls of men. Reject His teachings, and 
you reject His life. If, therefore, in judg- 
ment He withdraws Himself and His 
teachings from you, He is but acting 
according to your desire 

Jesus had truths to state which were of 
great importance to His disciples in their 
ministry as his witnesses. To state these 
to the multitude would only excite them 
to greater hatred, and endanger the life 
and ministry of both Himself and His 
disciples. He, therefore, chose to state 
the doctrine so that if their hearts were 
right, if any capability to receive the truth 
were left in them, they would catch His 
meaning ; but if they were gross of 
heart, malignant, haters of the truth, 
they would not understand. 

From this time forward the Saviour 
veils his truths from the multitude. He 
does not abandon them. He does not 
refuse to teach them. But they hear no 
more sermons of the mount, no more 



34 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

direct unfoldings of the rich truths of 
His kingdom. 

Those within the kingdom are no longer 
servants, but nearest friends, to whom He 
reveals the highe'st meanings of His life, 
and inspires them with the promise of 
eternal life in His likeness. Those with- 
out the kingdom are aliens. To them, 
parables are as judgments. Having 
eyes, they see not the truth : having ears, 
they hear not the meaning of the words 
that come to them. 

Yet Christ does not completely with- 
draw Himself when they reject His 
teachings. He still speaks to them in 
parables. There may be some who will 
hear aright. Some even of those who 
would have been aroused to dangerous 
anger by plain statement of the truth, by 
continual repetition of it in parables might 
be led up unsuspecting to a state of mind 
where truth could be received. " It is a 
blessing to have truth near, though sepa- 
rated by a veil." Moreover, this was the 
only chance left them to hear the word of 



TEACHING BY PARABLES. 35 

life. They had rejected the plain state- 
ment of the truth, and this is the only 
method left by which it can possibly reach 
them. And these pictures from nature 
have a power of clinging to the mind in a 
way that sometimes effects what the most 
earnest direct teachings fail to accomplish. 
Thus judgment and mercy, side by side, 
were sifting the multitude, and separating 
those within the kingdom from those with- 
out. By parables they may yet receive 
the truth ; and if they still reject it, there 
is the palliation that the truth is veiled. 
Mercy and judgment may not be sepa- 
rated, but the latter will be held in abey- 
ance until all the facts of the Saviour's 
life are acted out ; until the cross, and the 
grave, and the empty tomb have fully 
established His kingdom and made its 
mysteries clear. Then after the Spirit 
has come, His trained disciples with clear 
vision, renewed hearts, and divine guid- 
ance, will preach this kingdom with mar- 
velous power. The seed sown by the 
Saviour in these parables which still cling 



36 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

to the minds of the multitude, watered by 
the Spirit, now, under the earnest teach- 
ing of the disciples, may yet bring forth 
some harvest of ripened convictions. Who 
can tell how much of the harvest gathered 
at Pentecost grew from the earlier sow- 
ing of the Son of God ? 



HEAR YE THE PARABLE OF 
THE SOWER." 



M In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening with- 
hold not thine hand." Eccles. n : 6. 

" In the name of God advancing, 

Sow thy seed at morning light ; 
Cheerily the furrows turning, 

Labor on with all thy might. 
Look not to the far-off future, 

Do the work which nearest lies ; 
Sow thou must before thou reapest, 

Rest at last is labor's prize. 

"Standing still is dangerous ever, 

Toil is meant for Christians now ; 
Let there be, when evening cometh, 

Honest sweat on every brow ; 
And the Master shall come smiling, 

At the setting of the sun, 
Saying, as He pays thy wages, 

' Good and faithful one, well done ! ' " 

From unknown German Author \ 



"HEAR YE THE PARABLE OF 
THE SOWER." 

Matt. 13, Mark 4, Luke 8. 

Christ challenges the closest attention 
to this first parable. 

Let us give heed to the Master's words, 
asking, as sincere disciples, for the inter- 
pretation, while we examine the parable 
and its exposition by our Lord. 

It is a part of that great revelation of 
Himself which God has made to His 
people. Jehovah is become the seed of a 
divine life within man, and the husband- 
man to cultivate that life to a perfect har- 
vest. The King of kings is become the 
Father of His people ; the omnipotent God 
reveals Himself as the tenderly merciful 
and long-suffering Redeemer ; the Judge of 
all the earth bows in deep humiliation to 
bear His people's burdens ; the omniscient 
One, with His own blood, blots out of His 
sight the sins of His redeemed. We cannot 
of ourselves add anything to the sum of 
holiness, and even as we try to reflect the 



40 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

holiness of God, it is marred by our 
shadows, and the mirrored image is often a 
deformed one. With our reflection of the 
gentleness, charity, and zeal of Christ, we 
are ever mingling our own harshness and 
coldly formal service. We are sinful, and, 
strive as we may, we always fall short of 
any great attainment in righteousness. 
Yet the seed of a divinely perfect life is 
sown within us, and the infinitely wise 
Sower, who knew the end from the begin- 
ning, has prophesied a full harvest. This 
seed is the "word of the kingdom." "Thy 
word is truth," — the truth that scattered 
in human hearts brings "the kingdom of 
God and His righteousness" into the 
world of human life and sinfulness. 

This parable, so wonderfully fitted to 
the occasion when the divine Teacher used 
it to describe that crowd standing by Gen- 
esareth, is as accurately true to-day in every 
assembly to which the gospel is preached. 
Four classes of hearers were defined 
then, and all four are here to-day. You be- 
long to one, and only one, of these classes. 



THE SCENE. 41 

THE SCENE. 

What a picture is here suggested by 
the inspired writer ! A great multitude 
full of enthusiasm, curious, excited, crowd- 
ing out of Capernaum and the neighboring 
villages, eager to catch every word of the 
w r onderful Teacher. Pressed by the throng, 
this Teacher steps into a boat, and a few 
strokes of the oars carry Him and His 
disciples away from the crowd, yet He waits 
near enough to the shore for all the mul- 
titude to hear. Only a narrow strip of 
water separated His body from the crowd, 
but what an infinite distance separated 
Him in spirit from them! A rude pulpit, 
that unsteady fishing boat, but from it 
came a message as abiding and as power- 
ful as truth from God. 

Five hundred feet below the level of the 
sea, in a cleft of the hills, lies the lake of 
Galilee. Thus, as if from the lowest sta- 
tion He could reach, Christ spake to the 
multitude crowding the shore that sloped 
gently up from the waters edge to the 

mountain ridge above. Before His eyes 

5 



42 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

were large and busy towns and hamlets, 
and terraced hills covered with fruitful 
vineyards, — Gennesaret, the " garden of 
princes." 

Probably as His eyes return from the 
Fathers face, He sees a sower scattering 
grain on the hill-side above and behind 
the waiting crowd that stood like the 
ploughed field ready to receive the seed. 
We can almost see them turn to look as 
He bids them, 

"Behold, the sower went forth to sow." 
Galilee's lake still lies among her silent - 
hills, pure and clear as when this parable 
was spoken ; but sail and oar now seldom 
disturb her waters. The villages and 
vineyards that once lay all along her shores 
are to be traced only in a few ruins ; and 
the crowds that listened to the voice of 
Jesus are two thousand years away beyond 
death. Still that voice speaks to us, and 
still those seeds of truth fall like heavenly 
manna upon our hungry souls, and to-day 
are producing a richer and grander harvest 
in our world than even when they came 



THE SEED. 43 

in all their freshness and vigor from the 
Master's heart. Rather, we are still reap- 
ing the fruits of that sowing of the divine 
husbandman. These fruits are in all 
our thoughts and hopes, in all our homes 
and cities, fruits that have their root in 
that Masters life and work two thousand 
years ago. 

THE SEED. 

"Seeing ye have purified your souls 
in your obedience to the truth unto un- 
feigned love of the brethren, love one 
another from the (clean) heart fervently ; 
having been begotten again, not of cor- 
ruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through 
the word of God, which liveth and abid- 
eth." I Peter i: 23. 

" The seed is the word of God" 

All teachings are seeds that must pro- 
duce some fruit in every life into which 
they fall. All uttered thoughts are seeds 
that hold within themselves some life for 
future growth. In what a high sense 



44 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

must this be true of the " Word of God," 
which He spake who was Himself the 
power within all His teachings ! 

Observe this seed. It is from God, 
who knows man thoroughly, his history, 
his needs, and his capabilities ; who also 
knows the truth in its own greatness, in 
its fitness to deliver man into highest free- 
dom, and in its life-giving power as repre- 
sented to the world in Jesus. The all-wise 
God, knowing the end from the beginning, 
has given this seed of life as perfectly 
adapted to supply man's need, and to grow 
up in him to an endless life. 

Christ scatters the seed with a perfect 
knowledge of all this, and with an eternal 
purpose that it shall produce an abundant 
harvest in every good and honest heart 
For us the Bible, like a treasure house, 
contains this seed. " Search the script- 
ures, for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life, and these are they which bear witness 
of me." Treat this book reverently then, 
for it holds the words of life, the truth 
concerning Him who is "the way, the 



THE SEED. 45 

truth, and the life," to every good and 
honest heart. 

Christ is both seed and Sower. " He 
that soweth the good seed is the Son of 
man." Matt. 13 137. But He is also the 
Word of truth, the holy Logos, the per- 
fect expression of the thought of God. 

"God having of old time spoken unto 
the fathers in the prophets by divers por- 
tions and in divers manners, hath at the 
end of these days spoken unto us in His 
Son." 

God hath been made manifest unto us 
who do believe in Him. Prophets told 
us the truth of God ; the Son revealed 
the person of God. They knowing only 
in part, could reveal only in part ; He 
knowing the truth in the very counsels of 
the Father in all its fullness, uttered truth 
in all its greatness and wealth. Coming 
through human prophets and teachers by 
human language and symbols, it came 
slowly by changing modes and with vary- 
ing meaning. Coming by a Son, yea in a 
Son, who bore in His own nature the 



46 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

express image of the Father, the manifes- 
tation of the truth was perfect, complete 
and unchangeable. 

The great and wide universe, with its 
unnumbered worlds, with all its infinite 
variety and wealth of life and beauty, is 
but the incarnation of a few of the thoughts 
of God. All the tremendous energy man- 
ifested in the movements of the worlds of 
the universe, and all the accuracy dis- 
played in their perfect order, are simply 
partial expressions of the energy and 
accuracy of the divine Mind. They ought 
to be, and are becoming more and more, 
the illustrations of the workings of that 
Being whose nature is truth. They are 
the utterances of the mind of God, in a 
language we only partially understand, 
and at the best we can read from them a 
very indefinite knowledge of Jehovah. 
We would see, and God would have us 
see, a grander and nearer, a richer and 
plainer, expression of Himself. We 
needed an expression of our God that 
could come to our seared consciences 



THE SEED. 47 

with the voice of life's Omniscient Judge, 
that could speak to our sin-narrowed souls 
with the expanding, exalting voice of eter- 
nal life, that could speak to our darkened 
hearts with the voice of the Father of 
lights, that could meet our repentance with 
divine forgiveness, that could heal human 
sorrow with the compassion of a holy 
comforter, that could quicken hope by a 
revelation of the unseen glories of God 
and Heaven. God speaking in His Son 
is such an expression. Christ speaks 
God's will, but it is by speaking God's 
nature. He is the express image of the 
Father, the very utterance of His Being 
to our needy human race. 

This living Christ is the power within 
the seed, the Word within the word, that 
breaks the husk and brings forth a new 
life and growth within the soul. This 
divine life within the uttered word of 
truth, when it falls into proper soil, will 
put forth energy in a new life that shall 
strike its roots ever deeper and deeper, 
and send the foliage and blossoms and 



48 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

fruits higher and higher in growth towards 
Him who sowed the seed. The fault of 
failure to produce a good harvest cannot 
be in the sower or the seed. Indeed, if 
you scatter good seed in any manner upon 
soil properly prepared, it will grow. If 
failure come with good seed, the trouble 
is in the soil or its preparation. The 
Master illustrates this clearly and forcibly 
in the four classes of hearers. 



FIRST CLASS OF HEARERS. 

" And when he sowed, some fell by the 
wayside \ and the fowls came and devoured 
them up" (Heb. 2:1; Acts 26: 28 ; Matt. 
22:5; Isa. 53:1.) 

Christ's disciples were too familiar with 
the scene immediately around them to 
have any difficulty in understanding the 
letter of the parable, but they seek to 
know its deeper meaning. And the words, 
"who hath ears to hear, let him hear" 
with which He closed the parable, must 
have challenged the attention of the most 
thoughtless, while it was a direct summons 
to all in that crowd who understood Him, 
to look for a meaning deeper and richer 
than the mere picture with which they 
were all familiar. The letter of the para- 
ble is easily understood, but what is the 
spiritual truth it holds for us ? 

As we study this u word of the king- 
dom," let us try to catch its full meaning, 



50 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

and by applying its lessons to our own 
lives, give the ''seed" fullest opportunity 
to grow even to an hundred fold in good 
and honest hearts. 

The whole field was sown, but in Pales- 
tine, as in the far west of our own land, 
there, are few fences, and the feet of many 
travelers have worn a hard path across the 
ploughed and harrowed surface. The 
Master's explanation of this part of the 
parable is, " When anyone heareth the 
'word of the kingdom, and understandeth 
it not, then cometh the wicked one, and 
catcheth away that which was sown in the 
heart T 

We cannot justly make our ignorance a 
reason for not believing, yet if we cannot 
easily understand the teachings of Christ 
we are very apt to feel ourselves under no 
obligation to give them any further atten- 
tion. Nor have we any right to make the 
obscurity of the word and the difficulty of 
our surroundings the excuses for our con- 
tinued neglect of duty. Christ shows 
here the fallacy of all such pleas by the 



44 SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. 51 

expression which in the text is translated 
" understandeth it not." Literally, it is 
" inattention," neglecting to bring together 
in the mind for careful consideration the 
truths we hear. No one can be blamed for 
not understanding a subject which by 
actual, careful investigation he has proved 
to be beyond his capacity ; but he is 
deserving of censure if he fails to under- 
stand a matter which is vital to him sim- 
ply because he will not bring his mind to 
attend to it. 

" Then" and not till then, " cometh the 
wicked one" "■ Satan," St. Luke says, 
" and catcheth away that which was sown 
in the heart." Originally the soil was all 
alike. The whole field was well ploughed 
and harrowed, and the soil of the path is 
now as fertile as any other part of the 
field. 

A fertile heart may become like a hard 
path under a long procession of evil 
thoughts, ungodly wishes and sinful deeds. 
Satan cannot steal away seed that is cov- 
ered in the heart, and it is our fault if the 



52 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

ground is so hard that the seed can find 
no place to take root. It is our fault that 
we give no attention, that we do not care- 
fully examine the truths of life, but with- 
out thought push them aside. It is our 
fault that, while hearing with the ear, we 
give no attention with the heart. Satan 
catches away only that which is left ex- 
posed upon the surface. 

If Christ be true, these teachings 
of His are of infinite worth, affecting our 
life here, and our fate for all eternity. Is 
it the part of wisdom, of even ordinary 
good sense, to push them aside without 
careful examination ? Yet many have no 
other reason than ignorance for their re- 
jection of Christ. Rejecting the deepest 
truths and noblest gifts of life without 
any personal examination as to the valid- 
ity of testimony or credibility of witnesses. 
What a picture this is of many hearers 
in all our churches ! They come with the 
multitude to keep holy-day, but the seed 
falls upon inattentive hearts, as rain falls 
upon the paved street. Their church- 



"SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. 53 

going is often a sort of weekly opiate, 
with which to quiet the conscience, or a 
mask to deceive the world, and sometimes 
themselves, and yet with an unexpressed 
hope that God will count their church- 
going as a favorable item in their final 
account. 

St. Luke (12:13) tells of such a hearer. 
Christ had been preaching to the people 
an earnest sermon against all forms of 
hypocrisy, and showing them the great 
value of a soul, at the same time promis- 
ing the Holy Spirit to help them in all 
trials and sufferings while preaching the 
truth. "And one of the company said unto 
him, Master, speak to my brother that he 
divide the inheritance with me/' Evi- 
dently the man had given no real atten- 
tion to the sermon, and he deserved the 
severe rebuke he received. So it was with 
Agrippa, when Paul sowed the truth so 
faithfully, the seed bounded off from a 
hard and careless heart. 

Occasionally we hear people say they 
have no aptitude for religion. What will 



54 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

such people do in heaven, where every- 
thing is religion ? Others say they have 
no interest in "church-work," in other 
words, they do not have any interest in the 
work which the church has undertaken at 
the command of Christ. Will such peo- 
ple have any place in heaven, where the 
whole life is a special service under the 
command of Christ? These people, and 
they are many, are simply hardening the 
soil, and allowing the seed to die without 
fruit. Yet the Master has said, " Herein 
is my Father glorified, that ye bear much 
fruit, so shall ye be my disciples." 

Sometimes the very habits of what is 
called our religious life become a mere 
" crust of formality," hard paths across 
the heart. Attendance upon the ordinan- 
ces of the church ought to lead us nearer 
to God, yet how often while the body is 
obedient to the form of worship the mind 
is far away. This half-listening, this not 
attending to the word, is fatal to any 
true reception of the truth, and only 
increases the difficulty in the way of 



44 SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. 55 

growth. More and more becoming inca- 
pable of true repentance, such people 
have neither care nor fear. Their condi- 
tion does not disturb them, for sin has no 
deep meaning to them. They know in a 
general way that they ought to prepare to 
meet their God, but their hearts are not 
stirred with the thought of that great cer- 
tainty, and they are apt soon to grow 
indifferent to all things spiritual. 

A man gets into this hardened condi- 
tion, so that the Gospel message has no 
helpful meaning to him, only because he 
has exposed his heart as a common road 
to evil influences. He listens to the gos- 
pel without objection, it may be, but it 
arouses no personal interest, for it has 
fallen on a hardened surface. However 
he may apply it to others, to himself it is 
only a social or intellectual culture, or a 
listening out of curiosity, or for appear- 
ance sake. The Bible does not take hold 
of his thoughts as his ledger does. Sin 
and righteousness are not nearly so vital 
to him as the daily stock report, the con- 



56 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

dition of his bank, the prospect of harvest, 
or his physical health or comfort. The 
good soil may be there, but it is hard. 
While gracious influences rain upon it, 
they run off as from a hardened path, and 
the first hour's march of the old intruders 
will make it as hard and barren as ever. 
The truth may be scattered by loving 
hands thickly upon it, but winged day- 
dreams and wicked thoughts steal many a 
holy seed, and the heavy tread of evil 
passions and sinful habits soon crushes 
the others to their death. 

The farmer does not blame the birds of 
the air for following the* instincts of their 
nature in stealing his grain so much as 
he does the trespassers who have worn the 
path across his rich and well-ploughed 
fields. Too often the soil in which the 
word of God should have been received, 
and where it would have taken root, is 
allowed to become the highway of the 
soul's greatest enemies. To such a hearer 
the command is : submit yourself to the 
deep ploughing of the Spirit and the law, 



"SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. 57 

and when the heart is thus broken up, 
scatter in it the seeds of truth. For if 
the Holy Spirit has deeply furrowed the 
heart, we know that the divine Sower has 
scattered there seeds of vast spiritual en- 
dowments, and He who sowed the seed 
gives the sunshine and the rain, the dew 
and the shade of night, all in proper meas- 
ure for a full and perfect harvest. But 
it is ours to keep away all evil birds, and 
to see that the soil is not tramped so hard 
that the seed can find no place to grow. 

This first part of the parable ought to 
touch keenly every hearer of the word. 
Is your heart's soil thoroughly prepared 
to receive the falling seed, or is there 
across it a well tramped path of inatten- 
tion, careless listening, irreverence, any 
evil habit of mind or body ? Remember, 
there is one watching to steal away the 
seed that falls upon any spot that is not 
prepared for its reception. When you 
hear and yet neglect the word, you prac- 
tically throw it to Satan. When we think 
of this, and remember how little of the 



58 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

word we carry away from God's house and 
from our daily study of His book, is it 
any wonder that so many who hear the 
life-giving word bring forth no fruit ? 

Do not blame surrounding circumstan- 
ces, household cares, and strong tempta- 
tions, for stealing away the seed ; but put 
the truth so deeply into your life that none 
will be left upon the surface for these 
hungry birds to feed upon. 

We all constantly experience a fading 
of good impressions because we leave 
them upon a hardened surface where they 
cannot grow, instead of covering them 
with prayer, and cultivating them by an 
active pursuit of the duties they inculcate. 
To seize and use every good thing, 
whether it be impression, thought, or 
opportunity to bless others, is the only sure 
way of getting for ourselves its harvest of 
blessing. Sometimes amid the darkness 
of a midnight storm, the vivid lightning 
gives an instant view of all the surround- 
ing landscape, and shows the path from 
which we have wandered. So there occa- 



"SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. 59 

sionally flashes across the mind a vivid 
view of truth that quickens faith, awak- 
ens high aspirations, rouses the will to 
overthrow some habit of sin, stimulates 
to renewed consecration of life, and shows 
the path of duty. Why does this so 
quickly vanish ? Because we give it no 
hearty invitation to remain, no home to 
live in, no duty to perform. We receive 
it without attention. And yet it is possi- 
ble for us so to receive these occasional 
flashes of good as to have them increase 
to a frequency that will make our 
whole life a bright day of light and bless- 
ing. 

Strong graces, like strong powers of 
mind and body, require constant exercise. 
Inaction is certain death to them. As 
intellectual idleness means mental famine, 
so idle Christian is synonymous with dying 
Christian. All graces have their infancy, 
a seed time, when life is just beginning, 
and their way to full growth and fruitful- 
ness is through exercise and constant 
watchfulness. 



60 PARABLE .OF THE. SOWER. 

Yet how many are never strong Chris- 
tians because they are ever waiting and 
wishing for strong graces, instead of cul- 
tivating what they have to their fullest 
growth and greatest strength. Every true 
Christian has within him the growing seed 
of a perfect life. If the full harvest does 
not come, it is not the fault of the perfect 
seed or the divine Sower. How many 
turn from the sanctuary every Sabbath 
day without profit from the service, because 
they hear without attention. They receive 
an impression which they know should be 
immediately put into practice, yet it is 
neglected until even the memory of it is 
gone. There are others so thoroughly 
selfish and vain as to have no spot in the 
heart where seed can grow. It falls upon 
them as upon others, but bounds off as 
from a hard sidewalk. If they ever for- 
get themselves long enough to think of 
the truth, it is to blame the birds for steal- 
ing away the seed. They forget that if 
Satan had not taken away the truth from 
them, the incessant tramp of their own 



"SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE." 6 1 

vain conceits and selfish gratifications 
would soon have crushed it to death. 

Too many people live with the heart 
unfenced. It is a public common, stand- 
ing open with loud invitation to all trav- 
elers to walk across, or even camp within. 
It has no sacred place, no holy of holies, 
where only the great High Priest may 
enter. Instead of jealously guarding'every 
impression, the life is left open to all the 
vile seeds that float in the social atmos- 
phere. Seeds whose fruits are envy, anger, 
suspicion, sensuality, and all manner of 
uncharitableness. Thus, instead of care- 
fully loosening the soil whenever it has 
become hardened by the long-continued 
tramp of a bad habit, they allow seed to 
fall upon a surface entirely unprepared, 
only to die or be stolen by the enemy. 

How often we should be ashamed and 
self-condemned if we could gather up the 
truths we have lost bv inattention, and see 
them in their origin, their present mean- 
ing, the fruits they would have produced, 
their influence upon all our future life, 



62 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

their fitness to prepare us for the recep- 
tion of other truths, and then contrast 
them with the things to which we did give 
our attention. Truth driven away by 
some selfish thought. God-given beauty 
refused for ashes of earth. A growing 
seed of priceless worth rejected for seed 
of thorns and weeds. 

It may be that some good seeds have 
fallen on your heart in childhood before 
the hard path was worn, that would spring 
towards the sun if you would but break 
the hard crust that covers them. 

A visitor to a prison saw there a woman 
charged with the murder of her child. 
Every effort was made to arouse her to 
a sense of her guilt, but nothing pierced 
her hardness. The visitor was frequently 
at the prison, and his ministry was received 
by all save this one. Passing one day by 
a nursery, he saw in the hot-house some 
common garden flowers. He knew that 
the childhood of this woman had been 
passed in the country, and trusted that 
her girl nature had known a love for 



" SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE." 63 

flowers. He purchased a bouquet and 
took it to the prison. Going into the cell, 
he placed the flowers and a copy of the 
gospel of St. John on the little iron table, 
and went out into the hall where he could 
see and not be seen. The prisoner 
soon came to examine what had been 
given her. Through the grated door the 
visitor saw her look at the book and 
drop it on the floor. The flowers she 
touched and smelled. Memory began 
to do its work, and her face was soon 
buried among the flowers. The tears 
came, and there upon her knees, with her 
head and hands upon the table, she went 
back again to her innocent childhood in 
her country home. The snow and cold 
outside were changed to summer sunshine. 
The hard, sin-burnt heart was aglow with 
love for the mother watching from the 
home window. The little fingers were 
busy plucking flowers in the old home 
garden. The hard crust was broken, and 
the seeds that fell on the child's heart so 
long ago are now blossoming and bearing 



64 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

fruit in the reformed, regenerated woman's 
life. Many a one whom we call hardened 
might become a fruitful Christian if once 
the crust were broken. The Spirit can 
plough, and loving hands can sow the 
seed. Let the seed be ever falling, for 
we know not when the Spirit is at work 
in another's heart, and some seed may find 
a loosened, fertile spot in which to grow. 



SECOND CLASS OF HEARERS. 



" The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, 
and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." Ps. 34: 18. 

" We have the heavenly assurance that the path of the 
just is to shine more and more unto the perfect day. But 
this blessed truth involves its opposite, that the path of the 
wicked must grow darker and darker unto the total night, 

unless he give heed to the voice which calls him out 

of this darkness, and turn to the light which is ever striving 
to illumine it." 

Guesses at Truth. 



SECOND CLASS OF HEARERS. 

u Some fell upon stony places, where they 
had not much earth; and forthwith they 
sprang up, because they had no deepness of 
earth; and when the stm was up, they 
were scorched, and because they had no root 
they withered away." St. Matt. 13: 5, 6. 

" They on the rock are they, which, when 
they hea,r, receive the word with joy ; and 
these have no root, which for a time believe, 
and in time of temptation fall away '." St. 
Luke 8: 13. 

By a comparison between St. Matthew 
and St. Luke we discover what is meant 
by " stony places" and "rock." Not a 
spot in the field where stones lie thickly 
upon the surface, but where a large rock 
lies beneath a shallow covering of earth. 

The field appeared to be all alike until 
the path was worn. Rocks could not be 
seen. The seed is scattered over the 
whole field and, save upon the path, takes 



68 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

root and grows. The summer sun gets 
higher in the heavens every day, and sends 
his hot rays down upon the grain. The 
path is bare and hard, but elsewhere over 
all the field the grain has taken root and 
is growing vigorously. What a prospect 
for the Autumn ! The soil is fertile. It 
contains every element necessary to pro- 
duce a full and abundant harvest. Lying 
about the roots of the grain are stores of 
life to paint the leaves, strengthen the 
stalk, and fill its treasury with golden 
grain. The sun in the heavens pumps 
these elements of life from the earth 
through the roots to every part of leaf 
and stalk. The higher the plant grows, 
the higher into the heavens the sun climbs, 
that he may send increasing force to do 
this all-important work of developing the 
whole life of the field to its utmost capa- 
bility. But as the weeks go by we notice 
here and there a fading of the rich hue of 
health. The green turns to yellow. The 
leaves curl downwards as if striving to 
avoid the gaze of the sun, and in a little 



"some fell upon a rock." 69 

while these spots are dead. Why ? The 
grain grew, sending roots downward and 
stalks upward. The roots collected the 
life from the soil, and the sun pumped 
that life up through the plant. After a 
time the roots had drawn all the life out 
of the soil, and were creeping along the 
hard surface of the rock, vainly striving 
by every crevice to get through to the 
moist earth below. Inexorably the sun 
kept on at his work. His office was not 
the preparation of the soil, but the draw- 
ing from the soil of nourishment for the 
plant that must bear the grain. The roots 
are doing their best to supply all that the 
growing life of the plant calls for, but they 
cannot feed on the rock. The sun keeps 
on pumping from plant to fruit, from roots 
to plant. So the roots must now surren- 
der their life to feed the plant. Nor does 
the sun stop there. Higher and higher he 
climbs. He has the same work to do for 
all the myriad forms of earthly life. If 
he should stop, they would die. Hence, 
when the life is all drawn out of the soil, 



JO PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

the roots must give up their life, and then 
the plant itself must give forth its strength 
and die. 

How close the analogy between this law 
of plant life and the law of human life ? 
Whatever is superficial is apt to be trans- 
itory. Shallowness quickly puts forth all 
its energy and dies. Not having much 
root, it exhibits all its growth and strength 
upon the surface. Those who have little 
knowledge are usually forward and noisy ; 
they have little of the joy of the true stu- 
dent, whose greatest pleasure is in the 
silent companionship with knowledge, the 
deeply-rooted life that cannot be seen by 
others. How little of the deep and abid- 
ing joy of a symmetrical Christian does 
that soul know whose life is in what he 
does and says before the world, more than 
in what he is before God. 

There seems to be an improvement, 
however, in the condition of this class 
over the first class. There is here some 
life. In the first class, the seed did not 
even take root. Here it takes root, grows 



"SOME FELL UPON A ROCK. 7 1 

quickly, as with special fertility of soil, 
and promises a large harvest. But we 
soon discover that this improvement is 
but specious, and that the rapid growth 
upward is from lack of room to grow 
downward. There it was hardened soil 
above, here it is rock below. That had 
been made hard lately, and is upon the 
surface where you may see it ; this is 
far enough below to deceive you. Yet 
there is a real advance, for there the seed 
had no life ; here it has been received and 
is growing. You may break up the path 
only to find a rock beneath and the seed 
all blown away or stolen, and the Spirit 
can break up the stony heart as easily as 
the hard one. 

Failure in life is not among wayside 
hearers only; but many who hear "gladly," 
fail to bring forth the real harvest of 
life, yea, fail to live until harvest time 
comes. They are inconsiderate and im- 
pulsive, as the members of the preceding 
class were inattentive and careless. The 
" joy of the Holy Ghost" is unknown to 



J2 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

them because they have "no root in them- 
selves." There may be here and there a 
stalk that is able to get a single root over 
the edge of the rock, and thus live a 
sickly life even to the time of ingathering; 
but its harvest is puny, the grains are all 
shriveled through lack of life's vigor, and 
when at last it falls before the reaper, no 
golden seeds roll out into the earth to 
grow to another harvest. 

Our Saviour interprets the meaning of 
this class as " he that heareth the word and 
anon with joy receiveth it, yet hath he not 
root in himself, but dureth for awhile ; 
for when tribulation or persecution aris- 
eth because of the zvord y by and by he is 
offended" 

The seed here is the same as in the 
former case, the "word of the kingdom." 
Those upon whom it falls are attentive ; 
they are interested ; they receive the seed 
and cover it into their hearts, where it 
takes root and grows rapidly. In times of 
special interest, when many are receiving 
the word and accepting it openly, this part 



" SOME FELL UPON A ROCK. 73 

of the parable is apt to be too frequently 
illustrated. Excitable natures are easily 
stirred, and receive the seed without due 
preparation of heart. They accept the 
gospel with joy, and go forth valiantly, 
but they have not counted the cost. The 
warfare is a long one, with an enemy rich 
in resources and of skill unequalled. Their 
earnestness is volatile, quickly noticed, 
and soon loses its strength. They are 
seeking their own happiness rather than a 
change of character. They run swiftly 
while the street is smoothly paved and 
many are near to applaud; but "by and 
by" the way is rough, the special interest 
is over, and the crowds have gone to other 
excitements. 

Tribulation and persecution, which 
ought to strengthen Christian character, 
prove to this class a stumbling block over 
which they fall. They have put on the 
robes of disciples and easily use their 
speech, but in character there is no change. 
The old heart is still there under a new 
covering. 



74 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

They receive the word with joy, but 
their joy is thoughtless, a stirring of the 
emotions, not the peace of a changed 
nature. Their heart has been touched 
only upon the surface, not smitten with 
that blow of Jehovah that makes a stream 
of living water flow as from the cleft rock, 
full of life-giving power to the end of life's 
journey. 

For a time they "did run well," but 
after awhile they are missed occasionally 
from the prayer-meeting, they are less 
active in the Sunday School. For a time 
they rejoiced to be able to testify to the 
world that they were Christ's. After the 
time of special interest, when persecution 
arose because of the word, the sneer and 
laugh blowing like a hot, withering wind 
upon them, they drooped and died. For 
a while Sabbaths were sacred times, and 
the services of God's house a pleasure 
and a profit. But temptation came, and 
the time. of worship was neglected more 
and more for the opportunity it gave to 
attend to some little matter forgotten 



"SOME FELL UPON A ROCK. 75 

during the week. Soon the duties of the 
week that with a little stretch of con- 
science might be called not sinful, are 
postponed until the leisure of Sunday. 
Other desecrations of God's chosen holy 
day follow, and the surface religion is soon 
rubbed off. Thus the soul is once more 
put under obligation to sin. Such Chris- 
tian character is shallow. The roots have 
come to the rock, and the soil is nearly 
all exhausted of life. Yet they are the 
people who are the quickest to resent any 
hint that they are in danger. They are 
only not narrow-minded ; they are liberal. 
They are not narrow Christians, only shal- 
low ones. They will soon be as bare of 
all Christian beauty and fruitfulness as the 
withered spot in yonder field of grain. 

" By and by they are offended." Yes, 
they are easily offended. While the sense 
of the parable is "by and by they sin," 
yet in a commoner sense they are offended. 
They complain more than any other class 
within the church. The church is not 
managed properly, the singing does not 



j6 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

suit them, the preacher is too pointed, the 
ushers are too slow, they do not believe in 
missions. They are offended because 
some of the Bible doctrines stand un- 
changeably before them with stern judg- 
ment upon their lives. All these com- 
plaints are mere excuses for their own 
superficial lives. Their religion is a mat- 
ter of feeling, not of character. Feeling 
is transient; character is permanent. 
When that which aroused the feeling is 
gone, it subsides until moved by some new 
influence. Such religion is to true disci- 
pleship what a review, or a formal salute, 
is to a battle. Such hearing of the truth 
is playing with a divine gift, a mere wast- 
ing of heavenly, life-giving seed. 

The members of this class are guided 
more by the judgments of others than by 
their own consciences. Their religion is 
a possession, not a being. They have 
"got religion" more than they have 
become religious. Having no root of life 
in themselves, but only in their surround- 
ings, they are necessarily temporary Chris- 



" SOME FELL UPON A ROCK. "/J 

tians, so that when a change comes in their 
surrounding circumstances it changes their 
whole life. 

Not only do excitable ones belong to 
this class who receive the seed and so 
quickly let it die, but many a calm and 
quiet one, listening thoughtfully Sunday 
after Sunday to divine truth, receives it 
only so far as to produce a fair external 
life. There is no change of heart. His 
character remains the same. In one class 
of these shallow hearers, feeling is the 
only soil into which the seed is received ; 
while in this class, the intellect is all that 
is converted. One is heat without light, 
the heart's feelings running swiftly in a 
new road without the guidance of the 
head ; the other is the head-light pointing 
in the right direction and lighting the way, 
but not advancing. In both there is soil 
enough to receive the seed, but not enough 
to sustain the full and continued growth. 
Under strong temptation they will fall 
away. 

Even then the one will strive to retain 

8 



78 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

his pleasure in christian things, and the 
other will try to hold on to his outward 
christian life long after the roots are dead. 
Satan stole the seed of life from the way- 
side hearer without any trouble, but in 
this class he has to make some effort to 
destroy it. He witnesses the rapid growth, 
and tests it to see whether it be deeply 
rooted. He sends temptations, doubts, 
and causes of offense. The heat increases. 
A parley is held with the tempter. The 
soul sins, and christian character begins 
to wither. The more intensely the sun 
pours his heat upon a plant deeply rooted 
in good soil, the more rapid and fruitful 
the growth. The tropics receive the most 
direct rays of the sun, but are ever the 
richest in flower and fruit. Temptations 
are .blessings if you endure them, and the 
true Christian is always strengthened by 
conflict. Even when he falls before any 
particular temptation he is humbled, and 
thus lifted up. (I Kings 21: 29; I Peter 
5:6; Jas. 4: 10.) When successfully 
resisted, temptations and persecutions 



" SOME FELL UPON A ROCK. 79 

strengthen and develop the christian life 
by compelling it to strike its roots ever 
deeper and deeper into the soil. 

If the whole heart be changed, and 
thoroughly prepared for the growth of 
christian character, the Jiot sun of oppo- 
sition will only compel it to grow more 
rapidly. But if the roots have but little 
soil, and the heart's centre be a rock, the 
growth will be rapid enough, but death 
will come to one after another of the 
fruits till all are dead before ripened. The 
same persecution that sent the true Chris- 
tians to the stake, sent the shallow ones 
to reinforce the enemies of Christ. 

Many a man who has been a pronounced 
Christian and is now as avowed in his 
infidelity, is an illustration of this part of 
the parable. He boldly affirms that he 
has tried Christianity, was sincere in his 
practice of it, and it is a failure. If he 
would study his case more closely and 
logically, he would see that he is proclaim- 
ing his own shallowness. He failed to 
prepare the soil properly for the new seed 



80 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

of life, and the rock beneath the surface 
prevented the permanent growth of a 
christian character. The rapid growth of 
so divine a plant soon exhausted all the 
real strength of so shallow a soil, and 
naught was left it but to die. The seed 
was God-given and perfect. He, not the 
seed, was the failure. 

There are many who come to Christ as 
the young man who had kept all the com- 
mandments from his youth, but had in his 
heart a solid rock of avarice which he 
would not break up even for eternal 
life. 

The " rock " of selfishness which is in 
nearly every human heart is a great obsta- 
cle to the growth of Christ's kingdom. 
You offer all to Christ. Do you mean it ? 
Has the Spirit thoroughly ploughed your 
heart? Not merely made tender your 
feelings, and won the consent of your 
mind ; but has he thoroughly sub-soiled 
your heart, so that there is no rock left ? 
Are you ready to let your christian char- 
acter grow everywhere, even if its roots 



" SOME FELL UPON A ROCK." 8l 

crush out every pet sin and doubtful 
pleasure ? 

Foolish vanity stands like a great stone 
at the door of many hearts, otherwise 
good and honest. They are proud of 
what they appear to be ; they boast of 
what they can do. If the seed takes root 
in them, it quickly strikes the rock of self, 
and then through lack of soil their relig- 
ious life dies. The sun does not kill the 
plant. It dies only because the roots can- 
not find nourishment. Temptation and 
persecution and tribulation do not kill the 
christian life ; they are only the occasion, 
not the cause of death. Death comes to 
a christian life only because there is no 
soil for its roots, no food for its suste- 
nance — it is starved to death. 

Notice that the members of this class 
are all professing Christians, either in the 
church or out of it. The first class did 
not even start. This class started joyfully, 
ran well during the time of excitement, 
then withdrew and died. Their weakness 
was radical — a root weakness. The heart, 



82 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

the very core of life, instead of being full 
of divine seed, was entirely hard. The 
old selfishness had never been properly 
ploughed up, hence their sorrow for sin 
was more a matter of pride than of repent- 
ance. They were sorry for the evil of 
their lives because of the unpleasant con- 
sequences they feared, and their humility 
was a temporary subjugation of the feel- 
ings, not a heart's lowly sense of unwor- 
thiness. The great mistake of multitudes 
within the church, and a larger number of 
judges without it, lies in their considering 
Christianity a mere matter of sentiment 
or feeling. The plain teaching of every 
part of this parable, the unmistakable 
declaration of Christ, is that the christian 
life comes from a divine birth within the 
soul, which must transform, by gradual but 
complete renewal, the whole nature of a 
man. It is not a possession, or an opinion, 
or even a belief, but a living, growing 
character. 



THIRD CLASS OF HEARERS. 



"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first 
and greatest commandment." Matt. 22: 37. 

" Full seldom doth a man repent, or use 

Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch 
Of blood and custom wholly out of him, 

And make it clean, and plant himself afresh." 

Tennyson. 

'* All virtue and goodness tend to make men powerful in 
this world; but they who aim at the power have not the 
virtue. Again, virtue is its own reward, and brings with it 
the truest and highest pleasures; but they who cultivate it 
for the pleasure-sake are selfish, not religious, and will never 
have the pleasure, because they never can have the virtue." 

y. H. Newman. 



THIRD CLASS OF HEARERS. 

" And some fell among thorns, and the 
thorfis sprung ^lp and choked them" 

Here, again, the seed is the same as 
that which has been scattered upon the 
path and upon the stony places. This is 
a part of the same field, but the soil is 
not tramped, and no rocks are there. Yet 
when the good grain comes up, noxious 
weeds are growing as thickly as the grain. 

The soil was fertile, and the ploughing 
had been deep and thorough, but the old 
roots had not been removed, hence they 
grew up rapidly with the good seed and 
choked it They drew the strength from 
the soil, and shaded the good grain from 
the sun. 

In the first case the seed did not have 
any life in the soil. In the second it grew 
for a short time, then died. Here it 
retains the name to live, but brings no 
fruit to perfection. The seed is received 



86 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

into rich soil, is covered, and puts forth a 
good growth, and finding no rocks, it roots 
deeply. Yet, after a few weeks, if you 
will walk along the hardened path from 
which the grain has all been stolen, you 
will see occasional barren spots, with only 
the dead stalks remaining to mark the 
rocky place ; and here and there, also, you 
will notice large patches of grain mingled 
with thorns, cockle, mustard, or whatever 
may be the besetting thorn, or weed, of 
that particular region. 

The hearer of this class is not stupid, 
nor hardened as in the first class, nor one 
of mere feeling, as in the second class. 
In the first, there was no growing life. In 
the second, growth near the surface (both 
above and below), no high reaching fruits 
above, because there was no deeply-rooted 
life below. In the third we find the roots 
striking deeply into fertile soil and a rapid 
growth upward, but thorns are growing 
thickly with the grain The birds could 
not steal the seed, for it was received into 
the soil and covered. The sun could not 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS.*' 87 

wither it, for the roots found no rock. 
Why, then, has no fruit come to perfection ? 
The word has fallen upon lives thor- 
oughly ploughed, no rocks are there, and 
no paths are yet worn across the heart. 
They keep the word through all trials and 
difficulties, but they keep it with an in- 
creasing growth of weeds. When the 
heart was broken up, the old thorn-roots 
w T ere not killed, and now they are growing 
more rapidly than the good grain. 

It is another illustration of a heart try- 
ing to serve both God and mammon, try- 
ing to be both religious and worldly, with 
the hope of getting the best out of both, 
and thus failing to get the good out of 
either. The heart's powers are summoned 
in so many directions, and spread over so 
many conflicting interests, that there is 
not strength in any one spot to bring fruit 
to perfection. 

The capability of every soil is fixed. 
It can furnish just so much food for the 
life growing from it. If all that life be of 
good seed, and the soil be properly pre- 



88 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

pared, an abundant harvest will be pro- 
duced. Every weed or thorn requires 
food for its growth, and takes away just 
that much of nourishment from the good 
grain. Every life is capable, with proper 
preparation, of bringing forth an abun- 
dant harvest of good and holy fruits. But 
if bad seed gets in and mingles its growth 
with that which is good, all the good and 
true will be weakened, and much care is 
needed that it be not entirely destroyed. 
Many a man struggles through all his 
adult life to get rid of thorns whose seed 
was sown in his childhood. It is not 
enough simply to prevent evil seeds fall 
ing within your own or your child's life. 
The field that is carefully fenced and un- 
ceasingly guarded will yet grow full of the 
rankest weeds and thorns, unless thor- 
oughly cultivated and sown with good 
seed. If good seed is not sown with care- 
ful, continued cultivation in every young 
heart, evil will soon be seen there in vig- 
orous growth. The fate of the seed de- 
pends upon the condition of the soil. If 



"some fell among thorns/' 89 

properly prepared, all evil seeds and roots 
removed, and only good seed allowed to 
grow, an abundant harvest of fullest value 
will be gathered. 

The Master's interpretation of this 
verse is : "He also that received seed 
among the thorns, is he that heareth the 
word ; and the care of this world and the 
deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and 
he becometh unfruitful" 

St. Luke says, 8: 14: " And that which 
fell among thorns are they, which, when 
they have heard, go forth, and are choked 
with cares and pleastires of this life, and 
bring no fruit to perfection" 

" Are choked." As if smothered by the 
deadly gases that deepen sleep and stop 
the life. Gradually these evil weeds crowd 
out the good seed, robbing it of air and 
light. Evil never succeeds in conquering 
life by a sudden assault, but always grad- 
ually, and usually without being noticed. 
First dulling the senses, then smothering 
the life. 

The cares and riches and pleasures of 



gO PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

this life, in contrast with care for heavenly 
things ; striving for worldly success as 
contrasted with striving for eternal life. 
The cares that threaten, and those that 
flatter ; the poverty that oppresses, and 
the riches that unduly elate. The two 
extremes are touched in order to cover all 
the wide interval between them. 

This bringing of the seed of truth to a 
perfect harvest is everyone's business, and 
the rich are no more exempt from its 
duties and dangers than the poor. The 
poor man's toil and fear of days when 
work cannot be found ; the struggle against 
poverty, or the appearance of need ; the 
wife's unremitting household cares, and 
anxious fears for children growing daily 
into greater dangers ; the unrelaxing, bur- 
densome effort to give the appearance of 
greater wealth, are as dangerously deceit- 
ful as the rich man's care and anxiety. 
Yet the hard pressure of poverty is not 
more dangerous to spiritual life than the 
flattery of heartless parasites, or the false 
trust the rich man is ever tempted to put 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. 9 1 

in the power of his wealth, or the luxuries 
and pleasures which riches too often pour 
in upon the soul to enfeeble and destroy 
it. These and other cares of this life 
weaken and choke the growth of the 
Christ-life in many a fertile heart. They 
exhaust the heart's best affections and 
overshadow the good seed with a rank, 
poisonous growth. They are robbers, for 
there are robbers everywhere on earth, 
and the bad will steal from the good, and 
might will trample down right' wherever 
opportunity is found. 

The commonest tramp of an evil care, 
or passion, or pleasure, is often permitted 
to get into the most secret chambers of 
our lives to steal away our most sacred 
treasures, and murder our most holy affec- 
tions. And how easily and continually do 
we allow all manner of trifling annoyances 
and anxieties to commit petty larceny on 
our christian graces. The commonest 
household cares are sometimes allowed so 
to engross us that the good seed is crowded 
out of our lives. Every species of thorn- 



92 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

roots, all forms of inordinate love of 
things good in themselves, every wrong 
use of even right things, every variety of 
intemperance, all are ready with open 
hand to choke the life out of the good 
seed in our hearts. 

All these things, cares, riches and pleas- 
ures, are entirely innocent in themselves, 
but they become enemies of all true life 
when they take the place of better things. 
We all have " cares of this life," and it 
would be a sad thing for our best life if we 
were without them ; but is there no danger 
of having our life so absorbed in these cares 
that we have no room for anything better ? 
When your work is greater than yourself, 
you are doomed. "What great things he 
has accomplished ! " Won4^rs of achieve- 
ment ! But what of himself ? Is his whole 
life expressed in these works ? They will 
soon die. Has any man a right so to 
absorb himself in the cares of this life as 
to have no time for discharging. his special 
obligations to God ? 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. 93 

"DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES." 

Wealth wields in all human society an 
enormous power for good or evil. Under 
the control of a lowly Christian heart, 
riches may be a blessing of rarest quality ; 
but under the guidance of selfish ambition, 
they are sure to prove a curse even to their 
possessor. In itself wealth is a blessing 
to be received with deep thankfulness, for 
in its proper use God is glorified and the 
world made better; the deceitfulness of 
riches is a curse to rich and poor alike. 
The poor man may be as miserly with 
his penny as the rich man with his dol- 
lar. Avarice may be the thorn-root in the 
poor as in the rich, and it will bring forth 
as evil a harvest in the one as in the other. 
Riches promise much of comfort, ease 
and power; but these do not come with- 
out an accompaniment of larger responsi- 
bilities and greater dangers, and very fre 
quently the promise is altogether deceptive. 
How often the appearances deceive one as 
to the reality ! The rich fool in the para- 



94 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

ble rejoiced in the accumulation of goods 
for many years, his wealth was the whole 
of his life, its acquisition and its care 
absorbed him ; but the command of Jeho- 
vah, "this night they require of thee thy 
soul," showed how deceptive his wealth 
had been. The getting of wealth often 
becomes a moral disease, corrupting infi- 
nitely more valuable things in the life. 
With all their power to bless, riches are as 
likely to curse. 

"They that are minded to be rich fall 
into a temptation and a snare and many 
foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown 
men in destruction and perdition." Their 
minds absorbed in getting money, they 
lose sight of higher values, and often 
altogether lose the ability to secure any- 
thing but earthly values. Instead of ease 
and quietness, how often wealth breeds 
avarice and unholy ambitions working by 
unholy methods. The excessive haste to 
be rich leads to methods in business which 
rapidly destroy permanent moral wealth in 
order to increase temporary material riches. 



"some fell among thorns. 95 

Riches are thorns when they rob us of 
simplicity. Many a man, becoming sud- 
denly rich, has lost his greatest charm of 
character, and won only the hollow flattery 
of those who secretly smile at the assump- 
tion of the man they pretend to respect. 
Riches are ever a temptation to prodigal- 
ity, luxury, and fuller service of mammon. 
Drawn out of the sight of the woes and 
needs of others, there is continual danger 
of a rapid development of gross selfish- 
ness, and a loss of sympathy with the poor 
and the weak. Many have inherited 
great possessions, only to be cursed with 
poverty of heart. 

Yet no one is more deserving of honor 
than the rich man who has kept himself 
unspotted from the stains of undue haste 
and doubtful methods in acquiring, and 
from pride and selfishness in possessing. 
He is worthy of all respect who can receive 
unharmed the false homage and vile flat- 
tery so generally accorded to money. 
One of the humblest Christians I have 
ever known was a man accounted rich. 



96 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

His memory is blessed. Those who knew 
him best remember and love him for his 
goodness, not his wealth. The world is 
full of examples where wealth has proved 
a blessed minister to the christian life. 
Thus while riches are often thorns lacer- 
ating human hearts, they may be good 
seed, producing a hundred fold in the 
heart of him who possesses, and in the 
lives of those whom he blesses. 

But not only are those who become rich 
in danger of losing their simplicity, but 
there is even greater danger among those 
who remain poor. How often the sight 
of wealth breeds envy, jealousy, and pain- 
ful discontent. All these are thorns, and 
of the most dangerous kind. To the rich 
and to the poor, riches are dangerous 
chiefly in their deceitfulness, promising so 
much more than they can give We give 
up simplicity because they promise greater 
comfort in luxury, and greater power in 
display. And how frequently our hearts 
are deceived by the promise that as soon 
as we are rich we will do great good with 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. 97 

our money, and thus are tempted to such 
absorbing haste to be rich that we lose the 
very capability to fulfill the promise. Gen- 
erous giving as we are receiving is the 
only sure way of giving with God's bless- 
ing; it may be the only way to avoid dying 
" wickedly rich." 

Riches are thorns when they steal our 
love from Christ. In days when we had 
but little, our heart's affections poured in 
concentrated stream to Christ. For Him 
we lived. In His presence we thought, 
and loved, and worked. Riches came and 
gave us other thoughts and aims. We 
felt the possession of a new power, and 
with this increase of influence, our pride 
grew. We seldom stopped to think how 
temporary that power was. The love of 
self began to crowd out the love of 
Christ. That which lifted us heavenward 
gave place gradually to that which absorbed 
us in things that soon must die. Deceived 
by this new power, we no longer felt the 
need of divine power. Cheated by the 
glitter of this new idol, we lost our devo- 



98 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

tion to God. The sensuous choked out 
the spiritual, until the heart's fertility was 
all exhausted to support a growth of weeds 
that shall at last prevent any of the truth 
coming to perfection. 

Riches are thorns when they lead to 
pride. Counting our money as part of 
ourselves, we receive the respect paid to 
our dollars as if it were reverence paid to 
our character. A true man will receive 
respect and honor, whether he be rich or 
poor. A true man will render respect to 
nobleness of character wherever he find 
it, whether amid riches or poverty. It is 
not wealth that wins for you the compan- 
ionship and confidence of honest men. 
The man you may call friend is the 
one who admires and honors your truth- 
fulness, your uprightness, your christian 
strength of character. Lose your wealth, 
and he will still respect and help you, if 
you still prove yourself a man. Yet how 
many are proud less of what they are than 
of what they have. 

The eager rush for wealth would lead 



" SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. ' 99 

one to suppose that it constituted the very 
highest aim of life. With a vast number 
everything is sacrificed for money. The 
best years of life are given to its acquisi- 
tion. Character is too often put in jeop- 
ardy by doubtful ventures. Opportunity 
of self-culture in what is highest and best 
is neglected for closer pursuit of riches. By 
the eagerness of older gold-seekers youth 
is tempted to turn aside from truth and 
the slower methods of honest accumula- 
tion, to whatever will most quickly fill the 
coffers. Wealth may be honestly gath- 
ered and righteously enjoyed, and the 
truest Christian may reap largely of this 
world's harvest, and by every acquisition 
illustrate pure christian principle ; but he 
must be ever mindful of the command 
that while he is " diligent in business," 
he must also be " fervent in spirit," with 
Godly service. 

"Pleasures of this life." Here all are 
alike, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, 
for these are the common weeds. They 
ruin multitudes where riches ruin scores. 



IOO PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

Do you remember that young man so 
active in things good and holy, now so 
useless to his Master ? You know the 
cause of his failure. He received the 
word, and it grew rapidly for a time, prom- 
ising a large harvest. But his Christianity 
stood in the way of his pleasures, so he 
crowded out the good seed with a growth 
of evil weeds. Sinful pleasures kill more 
souls, and mar the beauty of more chris- 
tian lives, than all other thorns combined. 

Sometimes people are foolish enough 
to attempt to stifle sorrow by the " pleas- 
ures of this life," forgetting that at the 
same time they may be stifling a nobler 
life. How much better to purify sorrow 
with fervent trust in God, making our 
very affliction " work out for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 

There is none too much pleasure in this 
life, but there is a higher use of life than 
pleasure-seeking, a use that has peace and 
pleasure in its very nature. Yet how 
many men and women come gradually to 
know no higher end of life than "to enjoy 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. IOI 

themselves," meaning to enjoy everything 
but themselves. Do they never look up 
from their self-indulgence with a wish for 
something richer and nobler? Can they 
be content to live so valueless a life ? All 
true pleasures have their proper place in 
the christian life, but out of their own 
place they are in the way of better things. 
With the mere pleasure-seeker, inclination 
controls duty, hence such a man never 
knows the highest pleasure of christian 
labor — duty performed for the honor of 
Christ and the good of other souls. 

"LUST OF OTHER THINGS." 

Consuming love for any other thing 
will have the same effect upon the good 
seed that the "cares of the world" and 
the " deceitfulness of riches" have. It 
will not permit the fruit to come to perfec- 
tion. Such unhallowed love is the root 
of envy and jealousy. It hears with sor- 
row of another's prosperity and success, 
and never wishes good to another without 
a proviso, or a protest of the heart. 

10 



I02 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

Political ambition, as too generally 
exhibited, has a place under this head. 
Politics may be, and ought to be, honor- 
able. The politician whose aim is ever 
to lift his country to its highest possible 
life, to seek out the needs and possibilities 
of man's nature and interpret them in 
laws for his help, deserves high honor. In 
such labor he is a true minister of God. 
But when he is a mere seeker of place 
and individual profit, he is a thorn of the 
very worst kind. Christianity is a much 
needed ingredient in our present politics. 

The trouble with this third class of 
hearers is not only in the preparation of 
the soil, but also in the later cultivation. 
The weeds not only exhaust the soil of 
its fertility, but grow up and become a 
screen between the good seed and the sun. 
What a false view of the Sun of Right- 
eousness we often get by looking through 
the shadows of our own weed-grown lives! 
And sometimes these evil weeds of our 
hearts grow so thickly and so large that 
they entirely exclude from our lives the 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. 103 

great "light of the world." Their begin- 
nings are almost imperceptible, but their 
growth is rapid and their fruit deadly. 
Either we must destroy the weeds, or the 
weeds will ruin us. In both Peter and 
Judas there were many thorn-roots; one 
destroyed them, the other was destroyed 
by them. 

While the good seed is getting a fair 
start, a wise farmer will go over his field 
with care to destroy all the weeds and 
thorns likely to hinder the growth of the 
good grain. So will a wise hearer of 
the word watch against the evil weeds and 
thorns that spring up in our lives so easily 
and so rapidly. 

As we approach from barrenness to the 
full harvest, we notice that the causes of 
failure get nearer and nearer to the heart, 
and are more and more subtle in their char- 
acter. In the first class, the causes of fail- 
ure were entirely outward — feet and birds. 
In the second, both outward and inward — 
sun and rock. Here the causes are entire- 
ly inward — cares, deceitfulness, pleasures. 



104 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

Outward opposition is overcome, but 
inward temptation kills them. 

The wrong and danger come from allow- 
ing these weeds to grow in the heart as if 
they were of as good quality as the true 
seed, as if mammon were as good as God. 
The only proper place for thorns is as a 
protecting hedge around the field, and the 
only proper place for cares is on the bor- 
ders of life as ministers of protection to 
the more valuable things within. 

When you remove a thorn or weed, be 
sure to sow in its place some good seed. 
If a large weed in the field is pulled up, it 
leaves a bare spot, but with loosened soil. 
If good grain be immediately scattered, 
a good growth will be produced. If the 
spot be left to itself, it will either become 
hard, so that no seed can take root, or 
evil seeds floating in the air will take pos- 
session. Be careful, Christian, how you 
cultivate your heart's soil and the divine 
seed which the husbandman has planted 
there, lest when he gathers the completed 
harvest of your earthly life, it be for him 



"SOME FELL AMONG THORNS. 105 

only a measure of weeds, a crown of 
thorns. 

But who is free from thorns ? Emphat- 
ically, no one. But the deeper question 
is, what is your attitude towards them ? 
One of neglect, one of favor, or one of 
deadly hostility? " Break up your fallow 
ground, and sow not among thorns." 

The fundamental weakness of this class 
of hearers is that they allow good and 
evil seeds an equal place in their lives, and 
thus they are divided against themselves. 
Their whole life is a conflict. The two 
crops are struggling for possession of the 
life, and the end is almost certain to be 
the death of the good, for the good 
requires careful cultivation, while the evil 
grows without any care. 



" Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the 
issues of life." Prov. 4: 23. 

" Create in me a clean heart, O God ; 
And renew a right spirit within me." 

Ps. 51: 10. 

" Among the various undertakings of men, can there be 
mentioned one more important, can there be conceived one 
more sublime, than an intention to form the mind anew after 
the Divine Image ? " 

Coleridge. 



FOURTH CLASS OF HEARERS. 

" And other fell on good ground, and did 
yield fruit that sprang up and increased ; 
aitd brought forth, some thirty, and some 
sixty, and some an hundred." 

Fruitfulness is the mark of difference 
between this class and all the others. Each 
of the others bears some resemblance to 
this class, as error invariably carries a 
front mask resembling the truth, and it is 
this surface-appearance of truth that gives 
to every system of error its time of suc- 
cess. 

Like the first class of hearers, this fourth 
class heard ; but unlike them, and like the 
second class, they received the word. They 
heeded it, and gladly made it a part 
of their lives. Yet, unlike the second, 
and like the third, there was no rock, 
but abundance of rich soil. Instead of a 
shallow loosening of the feelings, the 
whole nature was ploughed, as in the third 



108 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

class. Unlike the third class, however, 
the old roots were all removed, and dan- 
gerous evil seeds floating in the air from 
neighboring fields of weeds were care- 
fully avoided or destroyed. Continually 
the heart-field was examined. Evil weeds 
were pulled up by the roots, and good 
seed sown in the loosened spots ; or, if the 
evil was not entirely uprooted, the soul 
stood in an attitude of opposition to every 
evil thing, while always favoring the good. 
In every case of failure, the fault lay not 
with the sower or the seed, not with the 
sun or the rain, but with the soil. There is 
an advance throughout the parable, which 
culminates with this class of fruit-bearers. 
The members of the first class hear, but 
do not receive the truth into their lives. 
Those of the second class hear and gladly 
cover the new seed with the shallow sur- 
face covering of their emotions, but there 
is no change of character; the heart is 
only stirred, not changed, hence they 
quickly die. Those of the third class 
hear, cover the seed deeply, have no rocks 



"SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND. IO9 

in the way, and really begin a new life, 
but they allow so many other roots and 
seeds to grow with the pure seed that 
they destroy its roots with thirst, and its 
fruits with thorns and evil shadows. In 
this fourth class, the word is heard, received 
into the life's best soil, and bears full fruit. 
Hard paths are ploughed up, rocks are 
crushed, and evil seeds and roots of thorns 
are killed and thrown away. The new 
life permeates with regenerating power 
the entire inner nature, while its fruits 
make beautiful and valuable the whole 
life of thought and deed. The life of 
such a hearer is not his old life, but the 
life of Christ growing in him, and causing 
him to grow into the likeness of his 
Lord. 

In the wayside hearer there was no life. 
In the rocky-hearted hearer the seed was 
only scratched into the surface and had 
but a temporary life. In the thorny hearer 
the truth rooted deeply and grew almost 
to harvest time, but the thorns and weeds 
prevented the fruit ripening. In this class 



IIO PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

the seed falls, the roots tap every spring 
of the heart, its tendrils feel their way 
through every affection, and its foliage 
and fruit may be seen in holy thoughts, 
in words of love, in deeds of righteous- 
ness. 

Perhaps the most serious difference 
between the third and fourth classes is 
that in the fourth the life is united, while 
in the third the life is trying to serve both 
God and mammon, trying to raise full 
crops of both grain and thorns. In the 
one, all the resources of the life are con- 
centrated to reach one aim. No division 
is allowed. " But one thing I do, forget- 
ting those things which are behind, and 
stretching forward (eagerly) to the things 
which are before, I press on toward the 
goal unto the prize of the high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus." In the other class 
the " house is divided against itself.'' 
The good seed springs up and grows 
rapidly in one set of conditions, while 
in another the good is hindered, and the 
evil grows with great rapidity. So a man 



" SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND. I I I 

of the third class may be very religious 
one day, surrounded by favoring condi- 
tions, and very wicked the next day 
because surrounded by temptations. His 
life is divided. Climbing to-day and falling 
to-morrow — making no advance towards 
" bringing fruit to perfection." 

Even in the fourth class the full fruit- 
bearing is not seen immediately after the 
reception of the word. The seed must 
have a sowing, a summer growth, and an 
autumnal ripeness for gathering. 

Let us stand in the Autumn by the 
reapers as they gather up the harvest. 

The hard path is still there. The bare 
spot and the thorny place are easily found. 
See the Master look with pity upon the 
barren, hardened path, and with sorrow 
upon the dead stalks marking the rocky 
spot ! With what grief of rejected love 
does He search among the weeds and 
thorns for any straggling mark of life ! Is 
any gasping, smothered life striving to get 
the attention of the Lord of the harvest ? 
' Tis only a leaf, or a shriveled, unripe 



112 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

grain. No fruit brought to perfection. 
But with what pleasure He looks upon the 
bowed heads, lowly with their full harvest 
of perfect grain. Some offer Him a hun- 
dred fold, no bare spots, no weeds, no 
ripened thorns ; but a harvest as full and 
perfect as the life's soil well ploughed and 
cultivated could produce. Some sixty 
fold, no weeds or thorns are there; but it 
may be that before they were rooted out 
they weakened the soil, and in their place 
the grain is yet green in harvest time. 
Some thirty fold, no thorns and a good 
harvest; but it may be that good seed was 
not sown while the ground was yet loose 
after pulling up the weeds and thorns, or 
the thorns were removed from the life too 
late for the good seed to grow to a har- 
vest. 

"But that which was sown upon good 
p-round is he that heareth and understand- 
eth." "But that on good ground are they, 
which in an honest and good heart, having 
heard the word, keep, and bring forth 
fruit with patience T 



"SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND." I I 3 

It is an honest soil. It is all through to 
any depth just what it appears to be on 
the surface, clean and rich. Not only so, 
but it is a good soil, free from all bad roots 
and seeds, and perfectly adapted to receive 
the good seed and produce a harvest. 
The soil is not good in the sense that the 
harvest is all ready for the granary. The 
heart is not good in the sense that it is 
already righteous, already holy, already 
perfect and prepared for the heavenly 
garner. A good heart is one free from 
all deception. An honest heart is a sin- 
cere one. Sincerity, however, is not all 
that is necessary, Yet how often we hear 
men say, " It makes little difference what 
a man believes if he is only sincere." 
Paul of Tarsus was sincere when he was 
making havoc of the church; he after- 
wards proved that his early life was all 
wrong. The Chinaman worshiping Joss 
is sincere, yet who is foolish enough to 
say he is right? The traitor may believe 
his treason right, yet the government puts 

him to death notwithstanding his sincer- 
11 



114 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

ity. A man going southward may sin- 
cerely believe that he is on the right road 
to a city that is really in the north, but 
will he ever reach his destination unless 
he forsake his old way, and travel in the 
opposite direction ? 

" An honest and good (noble) heart" is 
necessary. Not only a sincere one, but 
one ready and seeking for the truth. In 
such a heart the truth finds recognition 
and a home. The soil is fully ready for 
it, and the truth is seeking just such a soil. 
The Master does not say there are no 
evil roots or thorns growing there. By- 
naming different measures He implies 
that in part of the soil there was some- 
thing that reduced the measure from a 
hundred fold to sixty, and even to thirty. 
Yet all the soil was honest and good. 
There may have been thorns in the heart, 
but there was an honest and sincere effort 
to eradicate them. Every heart, though 
capable of producing a hundred fold of 
the good seed, has in it some roots of 
evil. 



"SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND. I I 5 

The fertile plain of Babylon, Herodotus 
tells us, commonly produced two hundred 
fold. Yet there must have been even in 
that fertile land some unfruitful spots, and 
here or there a weed or thorn. 

The purest lives are marred by some 
sins. The most fertile heart has in it 
some unfruitful spots. Not all the chris- 
tian graces exhibit a hundred fold increase 
in any one life. Yet an honest and good 
heart is ever ready, with eager desire and 
strong purpose, to receive the seed, and 
to give it every opportunity to grow. 
Goodness of heart consists in readiness to 
receive good seed and refuse evil. An 
honest and good heart always has a sin- 
cere love for the truth, and a fear and 
hatred of sin. 

We are commanded, not to produce a 
certain measure of fruitfulness, but to 
bring to perfection the natural harvest of 
truth. Our work is definite and clear. 
Not to control the issues of life, but, so 
far as in us lies, to cleanse and to keep 
clean the heart-fountain, whence they flow. 



Il6 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

It is not in the measure, but only in the 
kind that we are commanded to bring 
forth perfection. Three measures of 
quantity are given in the parable, yet all 
are called good. The scale of quantity is 
the capacity of our nature. The standard 
of quality is similitude with God. The 
one is as variable as human character. 
The other as immutable as the Divine 
Nature. The end is ever the same; pro- 
gress towards it is in ever varying speed. 
The kind of the harvest is fixed by the 
nature of the seed — divine seed must pro- 
duce divine harvest. And since the 
quality of the seed and the harvest is fixed 
by the Divine Husbandman, it is there- 
fore perfect. In quantity, both are depend- 
ent upon the heart-soil's capacity to receive 
and produce. But we have the comfort 
of the thought that the seed, whose very 
nature is to live and put forth energy, will 
surely produce its harvest to the utmost 
capacity of every life into which it falls. 
" Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for 



"SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND." I \ J 

out of it are the issues of life," — as the 
grain springs out of a fertile field. 

It is possible for a single hearer of the 
gospel to represent all these four classes 
in succession, passing from the lowest to 
the highest in their order. But if he 
belong to this fourth class, his character 
will not be a building without plan, a wing 
added here, a shed there, as the time-need 
is ; but the whole building will be " fitly 
framed together " and growing toward a 
perfect plan, the attainment of a God- 
given ideal. This life and the life of 
Heaven will not be simply linked together ; 
but both will be built of the same mate- 
rial, woven with the same warp and woof. 
Both will be the ever-ripening, ever-in- 
creasing harvest from the one divine sow- 
ing. Death to such a life will be but the 
throwing down of the scaffold from the 
completed character-building, the removal 
of the debris for the entrance of the heav- 
enly furniture. It will be but taking the 
web of life from the loom of earthly strug- 
gle, and brushing off the broken threads 



Il8 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

and mortal dust. It will be but the 
transplanting of a divine plant, from the 
exhausted earth-soil, to the broader field 
of an eternal world. If the two soils 
have a close resemblance, there will be 
no shock in the transplanting. But if 
there be nothing in the earthly soil like 
the soil of Heaven, how can the life 
which has grown entirely out of the 
one get any nourishment from a soil of 
such opposite character as the other? 
Heavenly graces grow in earthly soil, but 
all things earthly die in every attempt to 
carry them into Heaven. 

This character seed produces no selfish 
harvest. The bloom and the fragrance 
and the ever-ripening fruit cannot be lim- 
ited to self. Others will enter within the 
blessing. " For we are laborers together 
with God ; ye are God's husbandry ; God's 
building." And every laborer with God 
is moved by the spirit of Him who came 
"not to be ministered unto, but to minis- 
ter." Holy is the fragrance of some of 
these earnest, laborious lives, and many 



" SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND. I 1 9 

are the golden grains of blessing that fall 
from them into our weaker and less fruit- 
ful hearts. They are " God's building," 
in whose shade we rest. " God's husband- 
ry," where we gather fruit for refreshment 
in our weakness and our need. And their 
number is increasing. The husbandman 
is ever improving his estate, ploughing 
up trodden paths, crushing hard rocks, 
rooting out weeds and thorns, and scatter- 
ing the perfect seed of His eternal king- 
dom. Thus that kingdom is ever enlarging. 
All the causes necessary for its complete 
establishment and success are at work. 
The seed is more and more widely sown 
as the years go by. Richer and more 
abundant fruits are being produced by the 
increasing care of heart-culture. Men are 
gradually perceiving that Christ-likeness 
is the only true ideal of life, and that 
grand ideal is more and more prominently 
coming into contrast with lower aims, and 
thus dwarfing them still more. The 
omnipotent and all-wise God is on the 
throne, and His eternal purpose is to per- 



120 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

feet all things in Christ, and through Him 
to establish the kingdom of heaven as the 
universal and everlasting kingdom. 

The Christian need have no hesitation 
about scattering the seed, for the word of 
God has gone forth that it shall not return 
unto him void. M Sow beside all .waters," 
is the urgent command of the Lord of the 
harvest, and implicit obedience is only 
faithfulness to duty. Christian, your own 
life depends, in a very large degree, upon 
your faithfulness in sowing seed for growth 
in other lives. And yet while you sow, 
remember the influence of your own life 
in winning for the seed a good reception. 
Sow as the Master sowed, with longing 
love and ceaseless prayer. 

Remember that your life is more the 
exposition of your heart than of your 
head. You may think the right and live 
the wrong. You may think the truth, 
and understand its deepest statements, 
and yet live in profoundest error and evil. 
But what your heart loves profoundly, 
supremely, will, sooner or later, be 



"SOME FELL INTO GOOD GROUND. 121 

expressed in your life, and the world 
believes when the life speaks. Conver- 
sion is not change of habit, but change of 
the very principle of life. And change of 
principle is not change of opinion, but of 
loves and motives that come from the 
heart, not the head. 

And as ye go forth to sow, remember 
the words of the Master, " Lo, I am with 
you alway, even to the end of the world." 
Be not disheartened with the failures in 
the three classes, for here and there a 
good and honest heart will receive the 
word and multiply your sowing sixty or a 
hundred fold. 



" Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the 
issues of life." Prov. 4: 23. 

" In order to learn, we must attend; in order to profit by 
what we have learnt, we must think — that is, reflect. He 
only thinks who reflects." " It is worthy of special obser- 
vation, that the Scriptures are distinguished from all other 
writings pretending to inspiration, by the strong and frequent 
recommendations to knowledge, and a spirit of inquiry. 
Without reflection, it is evident that neither the one can be 
acquired nor the other exercised." 

Coleridge. 



" Take heed what ye hear." (Mark 
4: 24.) " Take heed how ye hear." (Luke 
8: 18.) 

This is a very important admonition, 
yet we pay very little attention to it. 
How many of us are watchful to hear 
only that which will help us to a nobler 
life? " What ye hear." Words of wis- 
dom and words of sinful folly are ever 
competing for our attention, trying to 
reach the mind, not only through the ear, 
but through the eye from printed page 
and picture. In a thousand forms of 
appeal trying to get our attention, and 
influence our life. 

What a motley group of petitioners 
they are that plead for a hearing! Some 
coming laden with gold and all manner of 
wholesome spices, royal gifts to enrich us 
with things that are good and pure ; others 
bringing deadly poisons with which to 
steal away our senses while they rob us of 



124 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

the true wealth and beauty of our lives. 
Some come to teach us a higher harmony 
of life, to attune us to full accord with 
God's most holy will ; others w r ould woo 
us to sin by strains that can at last leave 
us only with discordant sorrow and 
remorse. 

Many a soul has received its first stain 
in some heedless hearing, when every 
door of approach to the mind should have 
been carefully guarded, and every word that 
approached the ear, and every page that 
came before the eye, compelled to pass a 
challenging scrutiny as to their value and 
their purpose. Many a child is stained and 
weakened for life by the careless permis- 
sion of parents and teachers. They do 
not wish it, but they do not guard against it. 

Heedlessness as to what we hear is our 
first danger, but the admonition concern- 
ing it is not more important than the sec- 
ond, " Take heed how ye hear." We are 
not only heedless as to what we hear, 
but we are careless how we hear what 
is good. Many a follower of Christ, 



TAKE HEED HOW YE HEAR. 1 25 

who is weak to-day, might soon grow 
strong by careful attention to this com- 
mand, and all of us would find it whole- 
some food for faith and peace. 

The parable indicates at least three con- 
ditions of profitable hearing of the word 
of the kingdom. 

First, — A ttention. 

The reason why the wayside hearer 
received no benefit from the truth was 
because he did not understand it And 
he did not understand it because, when he 
heard the word, he did not attend to it, 
did not study it, did not concentrate the 
powers of his mind upon it to know its 
full meaning. Inattention was the cause 
of death to all the truth that had fallen 
upon his heart. " Take heed how ye 
hear" is an all-important injunction, for 
careless hearing, cynical hearing, attention 
to the form instead of the truth, receiving 
the husk instead of the seed, is the secret 
of a vast deal of the church's weakness. 
Attention is more than a mere hearing of 
words ; it is attending to them in order 



12 



126 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

to know their full meaning, their purpose 
in relation to self, and their fullest value 
to the life. 

" Having heard, keep, and bring forth 
fruit with patience! 1 "Keep!" A stu- 
dent hearing a valuable truth says, " I 
must keep that." How does he do it ? By 
concentrating his attention upon it until 
it becomes a part of himself. He looks 
at it on every side to see all its phases. 
He does not simply think how valuable 
or how beautiful it is, but absorbs it into 
his very life. 

But more than attention is necessary to 
profitable hearing. The second class of 
hearers gave full attention to the " word," 
and received it into willing hearts ; but it 
brought forth no fruit in the harvest 
because there was no true preparation of 
the heart for hearing the gospel ; it was a 
mere surface reception. 

Therefore, second, preparation is neces- 
sary. 

The second class died because the prep- 
aration was not thorough. A hearer may 



''TAKE HEED HOW YE HEAR. 12J 

pay close attention to the truth, fully 
assenting to it in his mind, and gladly 
receiving it in his heart ; but if there is 
not a complete breaking up of the old 
rock of sin, the new life — which requires 
for its full growth all of a man's nature — 
will die before the summer of his life is 
over. Not only must the ploughing be 
deep and thorough, but the old roots of 
sin must be pulled up and thrown away 
from the life. Sorrow for sin must grow 
into a hatred of sin and a righteous fear of 
it. The true loves of the heart must be 
purified and strengthened by companion- 
ship with divine love, while unholy affec- 
tions must be cut off from all congenial 
companionship, and fought against until 
dead or completely in subjection to a will 
that is allied only with pure affections. 

But something more is necessary than 
attention and preparation. The third 
class of hearers both gave attention and 
received the word into soil prepared for 
its growth, but there was no fruit brought 
to perfection. 



128 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

Third, — Cultivation is necessary. 

An honest and good hearer of the 
word is in earnest. With him, hearing 
is an important matter. Not to beguile 
an hour, or fulfill a duty, but to enlarge 
and enrich his life. It is a part of life's 
supremest question, out-ranking in impor- 
tance every other interest, whether of busi- 
ness, of family, or of reputation. To him, 
everything else is secondary to his perma- 
nent, eternal life. Hence he not only lis- 
tens earnestly, honestly and patiently ; but 
is a " sincere doer of the word." To him, 
religion is not merely opinion, or theory, 
or knowledge ; it is life eternal, and there- 
fore he cannot rest content with merely 
ploughing and sowing, but must cultivate 
with all skill and care that the harvest 
may be abundant and of the very best 
quality. 

Whatever care may be taken in the 
preparation of the soil and in the sowing, 
all the weeds and thorn-roots cannot be 
entirely removed before the seed begins 
to grow, and with the good growth the 



"TAKE HEED HOW YE HEAR. 1 29 

evil that is left in the soil will surely 
spring up. If the husbandman is watch- 
ful and industrious, these evil roots may 
be removed before doing much harm ; but 
while life lasts there is danger. Old sins 
which you thought were entirely eradi- 
cated long ago, may spring up again to 
choke your better life. Therefore the 
Master bids all to "watch and pray" 
against every evil thing. There is 
especial value in this third injunction, for 
whatever we love becomes a theme of our 
thoughts, enters into the formation of our 
ideal of life, and modifies all our plans. 
Every object of our love draws us towards 
its own likeness in proportion to the 
strength of the affection. The only way 
to avoid becoming like what we love is to 
sacrifice the affection. Christ is Jehovah's 
ideal for all our race. We reach the 
highest possible attainment in life when 
we arrive at the full stature of Christ. If 
we love Him supremely, love Him for His 
purity, His divine greatness of character, 
love Him as the ideal for our own life, wq 



130 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

shall grow like Him. Our present life is the 
soil. "The word of the kingdom " is the 
seed. Eternal perfection, likeness to 
Christ, is the ripened harvest of our life. 
It is worth all it costs to prepare the soil 
thoroughly, and cultivate it with watchful 
industry, in order that so divine a seed 
may produce a full harvest. 

Take four boys sitting together at 
school and watch their careers. One is 
stupid ; he hears with indifference. Truth 
makes no impression on him. He is a 
mere wayside hearer. 

The second boy is bright, quick, prob- 
ably the smart boy of the school and the 
pride of his home. He hears and instantly 
lays hold of the truth taught, — his whole 
countenance tells that he has caught the 
meaning. His recitation is brilliant, but it 
is seed very near the surface, no depth. 
Anyone who will tickle the surface will 
get a quick, bright response ; but such a 
boy never gets beyond the reputation or 
the ability of his school days. A few 
years out of school, and he becomes com- 



"TAKE HEED HOW YE HEAR. 131 

monplace, disappointing many great 
expectations. 

The third hoy hears, studies the matter 
in all its bearings, lays strong hold of it, 
understands it, and absorbs it into his life. 
He can never forget it. It is become a 
part of him. But he absorbs all other 
instruction just as thoroughly. That 
things are contradictory makes little dif- 
ference as to the place he gives them in 
his life. He may become an encyclopaedia 
of information, but it always remains 
information, never becomes life. He 
stands in the same attitude towards one 
kind of knowledge as towards another. 
His distinctions are not clearly drawn. 
He is full of all manner of goods, a u curi- 
osity shop " of ideas and beliefs, but there 
fs a great scarcity of convictions. Eras- 
mus was a very able scholar, but there 
were too many weeds in his heart, and the 
driving Reformation tide pushed him 
aside and left him stranded alone. Luther 
with less knowledge, but with mighty con- 
victions, moved all Europe, and kept his 



132 PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 

place at the very front of the Reformation 
till the end of his life. 

Our fourth boy will hear as the third, 
and with no more thorough knowledge, 
but while he masters fundamental truths, 
he also cultivates his susceptibility to 
every impression of like truth. He learns 
to recognize the lineaments of truth, and 
accepts only that information which can 
stand harmonious adjustment with what 
he already knows to be true. His knowl- 
edge may be as vast and varied as his 
friend's, but he stands in an altogether dif- 
ferent relation to it. He cultivates a love 
for all that is true, and as carefully cultivates 
a hatred for whatever is false. His con- 
victions grow with his knowledge, and his 
attitude is conscientiously uncompromis- 
ing. It is not enough that we hear the 
truth and "keep it," but we must keep it 
clean from all association with evil. 

The whole duty of hearing may be 
summed up in these two commands, 
" Take heed what ye hear/' and, " Take 
heed how ye hear." Hear the truth, and 



133 

take heed how ye hear it. Avoid all else 
than truth. Hear not falsehood, hear not 
folly, hear not evil. Hear the truth, "the 
word of the kingdom," at all hazard, but 
take heed how ye hear even the truth. 
Hear it with attention, with due prepara- 
tion of heart, and with continued cultiva- 
tion, for this is the hearing by which faith 
comes, "and by grace are ye saved 
through faith." 



"And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not to that 
body that shall be, but bare grain it may chance of wheat, 
or of some other grain: 

But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to 
every seed His own body." — I Cor. 15: 37, 38. 

Ah ! when shall all men's good 
Be each man's rule, and universal peace 
Lie like a shaft of light across the land, 
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, 
Through all the circle of the golden year ? 

" As if the seedsman, rapt 

Upon the teeming harvest, should not dip 

His hand into the bag : but well I know 

That unto him who works, and feels he works, 

This same grand year is ever at the doors " 

— Tennyson. 

4 'We have attempted to produce facts and evidence which 
should make it probable, that by far the greatest factor in 
the moral and humane progress of mankind, is the influence 
of the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. The argument 
is logical ; and whoever overthrows it, cannot do so by 
vague declamation, but only by presenting a sufficient cause, 
other than Christianity, which shall account for these facts 
and changes." — " Gesta Christi." 



PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

"And He said, So is the kingdom of 
God, as if a man should cast seed into the 
ground ; 

And should sleep, and rise night and 
day, and the seed should spring and grow 
up, he knoweth not how. 

For the earth bring eth forth fruit of 
herself; first the blade, then the ear ; 
after that, the full corn in the ear. 

But when the fruit is brought forth, 
im7nediately He putteth in the sickle, 
because the harvest is come" — (Mark 4 : 
26-29.) 

This parable, so full of seed for the 
Christian life, so rich in its hints of the 
nature of spiritual growth, and so helpful 
in its prophecy of the final harvest, is 
an appropriate theme for a Spring-time 
study. 

The Parable of the Sower taught us 
how the good seed was scattered by the 



I36 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

Sower, and how it was received by human 
hearts. This parable teaches the nature 
of the seed, the character of its growth, 
and the certainty of the harvest. In both 
parables, the "field is the world," and the 
seed is " the word of the kingdom." In 
the former, the "harvest is the end of the 
world ; " in the latter, the harvest is when 
" the fruit is brought forth (or offers 
itself)." 

The parable of sowing taught us that 
while the good seed was to be scattered 
freely everywhere, whatever the quality 
of the soil, in many lives it would bring 
forth no ripened harvest. In this parable 
it is assumed that good seed cast into 
good ground will grow to its proper har- 
vest, while the main purpose of the para- 
ble is to illustrate the inherent vitality and 
productiveness of the seed, and the pro- 
gressive character of its growth to perfec- 
tion. 

For our analysis we cannot do better 
than to follow the order of thought given 
in the parable. 



Patience and hope. 137 

u As if a man should cast seed into the 
ground!' 

There is a suggestion here worth care- 
ful attention, but as it is not necessary to 
an exposition of the parable, and to avoid 
repetition, it will be considered in our 
study of the law of sowing and reaping. 

"And should sleep and rise night and 
day" 

Seed-time and harvest are the two 
prominent seasons in a farmer's life. All 
things else in his work are secondary to 
the sowing and the reaping, hence in the 
Masters parable they are left in the back- 
ground. The soil is to be carefully pre- 
pared, the evil weeds thrown out, the poi- 
sonous roots destroyed, and good seed 
cast into the ground. The less important 
things are necessary, and therefore the 
sower does not sit down in idleness after 
the sowing, but does whatever is necessary 
to prepare for the coming harvest. So far 
as the growth of the seed is concerned, he 
can do nothing but wait. He knows " not 
how" it grows, but rests in the certainty 

13 



I38 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

that by a natural law, not under his con- 
trol, the seed will grow to the harvest. 

This is not a doctrine that permits indo- 
lence, but a lesson of patience and hope. 
When a man has done his wisest work 
with all thoroughness and skill, he has 
dealt only with the conditions of growth. 
He cannot give to the seed any additional 
power to "spring up and grow." His 
work is altogether with the outward con- 
ditions, not at all with the inward life. 
All he can do is to take the seed which 
has life in itself, and put it in the ground 
which has the fertility to support that life 
in its growth, then patiently and hopefully 
to wait for the harvest. He may know 
very little of the laws of growth, but he is 
very sure of the fact of growth ; and hence 
his patience comes not from ignorance of 
the manner, but from assurance of the 
fact. 

How slow we are to learn this lesson of 
patience that is taught with so great sub- 
limity in every work of God, and with so 
great emphasis in all His word. No one 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 1 39 

can read the story of that long period 
when Jehovah was drawing the present 
sublime harmony of the universe out of 
its early confusion and darkness, without 
wondering at the infinite patience of the 
Creator. He planted the seeds of the 
future harvest of beauty and order, and 
then let them grow according to the prin- 
ciple of life which He had put within them. 
The growth of continents, of trees, and of 
animal life, and the slow development of 
human history, tell the same story of the 
patience of our God. 

The Bible teaches even more plainly 
the unhasting patience of Jehovah in 
working out his mighty designs. The lives 
of His ancient prophets, Enoch, Noah, 
Abraham, Moses, were all illustrations of 
His patient sowing and waiting for a har- 
vest. The whole course of human history 
is an illustration of Jehovah's patience 
with a sinful, rebellious people, yet He 
never falters in His efforts to bring them 
up to the height of His eternal purpose 
for their redemption. How patiently the 



I40 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

Saviour laid the deep, enduring founda- 
tions of His kingdom! He knew truth's 
power of growth, and, therefore, without 
fear or doubt, waited for the harvest. 
What patience to go quietly on through 
shame to death without once trying to 
hasten the end, or resist the cruelty ! 

The Christian's view of time and life 
should come from his Lord, who counted 
the earthly life of worth mainly as a Spring- 
time for the sowing of "the word of the 
kingdom," with all eternity for the growth. 
We think of time in periods, as its beats 
its changes into our lives, but there are 
no such divisions of time with God. He 
who was before time began, and still will 
be when time is ended, has no need to 
count its years or note its changing his- 
tory. The end, the beginning, and all the 
history are present to His consciousness; 
hence He never unwisely hurries, or indo- 
lently lags; but always moves in patience 
from the first cause in Himself through all 
the infinite variety of growth and wide- 
branching effects to His own final purpose. 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 141 

Definitely, certainly, persistently, by 
the principle of growth which He has put 
within all life, and the command He lays 
upon it, Jehovah is guiding our whole 
race to the final harvest. Yet how often 
He might say to us as he said to Ephraim 
of old, "I took them on My arms ; but 
they knew not that I healed them." 

In our impatience to see the end of 
wickedness, we sometimes forget that the 
" times and seasons " are in God's hand, 
and are tempted even to lose our faith in 
His supreme control of all the issues of 
life. We cry out, less in prayer than 
in unbelief, M How long, O Lord, how 
long!" And sometimes we even try to 
gather the harvest before it is ripe, and 
thus in our " zeal without knowledge " 
ruin all. 

A few years before the civil war, Fred. 
Douglass was addressing a crowded audi- 
ence. He depicted the fearful condition 
of his race, the degradation and horrors 
of slavery, the indifference of one great 
political party, and the determined oppo- 



142 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

sition of the other. The Supreme Court 
had just decided against the black man, 
and all the indications seemed to point 
to a heavier curse than ever about to fall 
upon his doomed race. The picture was 
a fearful one, and it oppressed the audi- 
ence with the speakers own feelings of 
despair, and they were ready with him to 
cry out for vengeance. In a moment of 
profound silence, that strange old woman, 
Sojourner Truth, rose from her seat, and 
pointing her bony finger at the speaker, 
asked, " Frederick, is God dead?" It 
was like a flash of light in midnight 
gloom. In his own way and time, Jeho- 
vah made His purpose plain. 

The best we can do is to do our best, 
and then to "hope and quietly wait," 
leaving the harvest all to God. Our dis- 
couragement grows out of lack of faith, 
just as hopelessness always follows the 
death of faith. We may look over the 
world and see only the very apparent 
fruits of sin in the church, and see only its 
parsimony and lack of fidelity to the great 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 143 

trust for which it exists ; but such a view 
is thoroughly deceptive. Like the cynic's 
view of a sincere and earnest life, we carry 
to a great problem a little mind, and 
hastily condemn as not existing a power 
of life too rich and deep for our narrow 
souls to measure. Like the leaven in the 
meal, like the seed beneath the soil, 
secretly and certainly, the "mind that was 
in Christ " is taking possession of the 
intellectual and spiritual life of our world. 
This influence is creeping into the 
world's legislation, into social customs, 
into war and commerce, into heathen 
lands and heathen hearts, and everywhere 
it is growing towards the full possession 
of the world for Christ. It is the quiet 
whisper of God to all our race, saying, 
" This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye 
turn to the right hand and when ye turn 
to the left." This ought to put to death 
all thought of our own importance, and 
make us feel a deep humility in the pres- 
ence of truth with its endless life and 
mighty work. Christ sowed and Christ 



144 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

shall reap. For there are two great seasons 
in the life of His kingdom, when He was 
here to sow and when He comes again to 
reap. Between these times is the silent, 
secret growth of the kingdom under the 
guidance of the Spirit. Our work is to 
scatter the seed, and wait for the har- 
vest. 

"And the seed shall spring up and 
grow, he knoweth not how!' 

Christ evidently expected His kingdom 
to have a perfectly natural growth ; rapid 
and wonderful, but strictly according to 
the law of growth ; and any careful study 
of this parable will disclose a very close 
analogy between growth in nature and 
growth in the spiritual kingdom. 

All the phenomena of growth are indi- 
cations of a profound mystery. Every 
farmer is sure that his seed is growing ; he 
can point out all the marks of growth ; 
but " he knoweth not how " it grows. Not 
only is it out of our power to make the 
seed grow, but it is out of our knowledge 
how it grows. 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 1 45 

From seed through the tender " blade, 
then the ear, then the full corn in 
the ear," to the harvest. The outer 
forms of growth are plain enough, but 
the inner spirit of life is a profound mys- 
tery. And you cannot get away from the 
mystery ; it is everywhere. What is the dif- 
ference between living tissue and dead ? 
One is a marvellous combination of 
strength and beauty, perfectly fulfilling its 
purpose ; the other is worthless, except as 
a study. Man recognizes the fact of dif- 
ference, but "knoweth not how" this 
difference is created. As in material 
growth, so in spiritual, the cause and 
much of the process are mysterious. 
The kingdom of spiritual life, like the 
kingdom of physical life, cometh not with 
observation, but groweth in secret. " The 
wind bloweth where it listeth ; thou hearest 
the voice thereof, but knowest not whence 
it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is 
everyone that is born of the Spirit." 

The spiritual forces at work in the 
world do not challenge attention by noise 



I46 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

or display, yet they are growing into every 
nook and corner of human life. They may 
not always completely change a man's heart 
and mind, but where in all the world is there 
a spot not already modified by the spirit- 
ual forces started by Christ ? The Master 
himself gives us a perfect illustration of 
this secret and gradual changing of the 
whole world which He is working by 
His spirit. He said, " The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman 
took and hid in three measures of meal, till 
it was all leavened." Leaven, yeast, is 
essentially different from the meal into 
which it is put. So is the kingdom of 
heaven, the Christ-given life, is a life 
essentially different from the life of the 
world, which has no more power to change 
itself than the meal has to rise without 
the leaven. It is the principle of new life 
in Christ that raises the world, completely 
renewing it, as it is the principle of new 
life in the leaven that transforms the meal. 
In both cases it is the life that is intro- 
duced, and life that propagates itself 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 1 47 

secretly and gradually until the "whole 
lump " is changed. 

Science has taught us that the yeast we 
use is a mass of living cells so minute that 
"a cubic inch of yeast in the heat of fer- 
mentation contains upwards of eleven hun- 
dred millions of them." These minute cells, 
when they grow to full size, give off little 
buds. These buds in their turn grow 
and produce other buds. Thus, by a very 
rapid process of multiplication, this life, 
which has been put into the heart of the 
dough, works its way in a few hours to 
every particle of the whole lump. 

"So is the kingdom of heaven." Its 
seed of life by a gradual, and in a large 
measure secret, growth, multiplies and 
spreads until it permeates the whole intel- 
lectual and moral life of our race. " The 
truth " takes men as they are and lifts 
them to a sanctified* life by its own power 
of growth. Men are not transformed in 
order to receive the truth, but they receive 
it in order to be transformed. They cannot 
transform themselves without the seed of 



I48 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

truth any more than the meal can with- 
out the leaven. 

Thus the task set before the disciples 
was to sow the seed of truth. They had 
no power to control its growth, but they 
had the promise which God has written 
so often in His book and so plainly in the 
seed's own life, " It shall not return unto 
me void ; but it shall accomplish that which 
I please, and it shall prosper in that for 
which I sent it." 

When we contrast the weakness of the 
men chosen for the work and the enormous 
difficulties to be overcome, with the rapid 
spread of the gospel and the wonderful 
growth of the church, we have a sublime 
illustration of this parable of the Master. 

Secrecy and spontaneity (automate) 
are attributes of all true growth, whether 
in the physical world or the spiritual. 
Not all the marks of growth are on the 
surface of the field of grain, and we are 
in serious error if we think that there are 
no marks of spiritual growth but such as 
are plain to our eyes. Indeed, it is very 



149 

doubtful whether the truest spiritual life 
is ever the most apparent. Many that 
seem to us to be first, may be last in the 
Master's judgment. " The word of the 
kingdom" is not something that is cast 
away from God, with a life dependent 
upon the care of men. It is a living spir- 
itual power in which God works to save 
the immortal souls of beings created in 
His image. His spirit is the life within 
the seed of truth, and, therefore, it has an 
inherent life that compels growth wherever 
the seed falls into soil capable of support- 
ing life. The seed is not the life, but the 
means by which the life grows to its own 
harvest. The life bursts from the seed, 
leaving it to die, and grows out of the form 
of one seed through the stalk into a larger 
and more abundant life in many seeds. 
The harvest is easily identified with the 
seed sown, but the life of the little grain 
has built for itself a larger and more val- 
uable place for itself and its work. Both 
seed and harvest are reservoirs of the life 
that has grown from the smaller into the 



14 



150 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

larger. A chemist can make a grain of 
wheat corresponding exactly in all its parts 
to the living grain, but the manufactured 
grain will neither rise with the yeast nor 
grow in the earth. Man may make the 
reservoir, but God only can give life. Yet 
the life is what gives the seed its whole 
value. So it is with the "word of the 
kingdom," in external form it may bear 
the closest resemblance to any word of 
man ; but its inherent life makes it an 
altogether different seed in both kind and 
power. Even of the word of God it is 
said, " The letter (the mere form) kill- 
eth" — leads only to death — but the inher- 
ent spirit is life. As in the Old Testament 
the spirit of life grew by means of an 
elaborate ritual and the words of inspired 
prophets, so in the New Testament the 
" word of the kingdom " is the means by 
which the same spirit is spreading a divine 
life throughout the world. " The word 
of God is living, and puts forth energy 
(growth)." 

The power of Judaism over the thoughts 



" HE KNOWETH NOT HOW. I 5 I 

and feelings of the first Christians, the 
gigantic power in Roman heathenism, the 
deadly hatred of a world-wide paganism, 
the subtle opposition of all forms of phi- 
losophy, the corrupt ideas almost univer- 
sally associated with religious worship, the 
actual denial of the immortality of the soul 
by the head of the church in ancient Rome 
a few years before the birth of Christ, the 
weakness and obscurity of the early Chris- 
tians, everything seemed to make it impos- 
sible for the "kingdom of heaven" to 
take possession of the world, or even to 
find a quiet spot in which to keep alive 
the Christ-taught faith. But in spite of 
opposition without and ignorance and sin 
within, the Masters kingdom has gone 
from victory to victory, persistently grow- 
ing into possession of the life of the world. 
We know not how, for we cannot trace it 
except in the indications that are upon 
the surface, " the blade, the ear, and the 
full corn in the ear." We know that the 
Son of Man scattered the seed, and we 
saw the tender blade break through the 



152 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

ground only to meet the storms that beat 
upon it with such relentless fury. Again 
and again we watched to see it die under 
the overwhelming opposition of its ene- 
mies, and the selfishness and treachery of 
its friends ; but still it grew by its own 
inherent life, from the tender blade to the 
ear, and now the full corn in the ear is 
proving its ability to fulfill the mission 
inherent in its life, to fill the whole earth 
with the knowledge of the glory of God. 

" First the blade, then the ear, then the 
full corn in the ear." 

These words teach the most important 
lesson of the parable. " Heaven is not 
reached by a single bound," any more 
than a harvest is ready as soon as the sow- 
ing is accomplished. Growth there must 
be from seed to ripened fruit. So with 
the kingdom of Christ, whether in the 
world at large, or in the individual life, it 
must grow, and its usual growth is not fit- 
ful, but steadily progressive. Yet from 
the beginning, when the disciples asked, 
" wilt Thou at this time restore the king- 



PROGRESSIVE GROWTH. I 53 

dom ? " even until now, men have ever been 
looking for " signs and wonders " in spirit- 
ual growth. 

Yet the Master teaches the law of grad- 
ual progress as the law of His kingdom's 
growth, and every christian student of 
human history is impressed with the power 
of this persistent and gradual growth of 
Christ's influence. A few men of no 
influence, and not remarkable for either 
intellectual or spiritual power, are com- 
missioned to sow the seed of a spiritual 
kingdom. They only half understand 
their mission, yet are forced from one 
stage of growth to another, until the 
ignorant fishermen of Galilee are become 
the saints of Christendom. So with the 
seed they scattered ; it has grown into pos- 
session of the world's best soil, and still 
is growing with ever increasing vigor. 

Like the leaven and the seed, this king- 
dom of divine life is growing quietly with 
a sure and gradual growth through the 
" whole lump" of human life. Trace any 
of the noblest thoughts and works of to- 



154 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

day to their origin, and you will find that 
the spirit of Christ has been with them 
from their birth, giving them their life, 
and controlling them in their growth. 

Take out of our civilization all that has 
grown directly from Christ's life and 
teachings, and you would rob the world 
of its noblest life and greatest beauty. 
All the inspiring hopes and satisfying 
faiths born of the Spirit, all the peace of 
Christ which has quieted so many troub- 
led souls, all that deliverance from the 
thraldom of creatures to the freedom of 
children given us by the gospel of redemp- 
tion, all would be swept away before the 
storms of passion, and the slavery of 
sin. 

Because we do not see the power of 
Christ break forth like a human power, 
but only know it as growing secretly and 
gradually, is no reason for discourage- 
ment. The silent force of gravity is 
mightier far than the loudest tempest ; 
and the persistent life that to-day is 
silently urging its way to the harvest in 



SECRET GROWTH. I 55 

every field, has proven itself stronger than 
all the storms and bitter cold of winter. 

Not "with observation," but in silent, 
endless growth. Not challenging atten- 
tion by a storm or flood, but in silent 
growth within the heart, a well of living 
water flowing on forever with spiritual 
life and health in every drop. As in 
the world at large, so in the individual 
soul, the kingdom of heaven is like 
a seed springing into life secretly, and 
gradually growing to the full harvest Not 
many of us know how or when the first 
seed fell into our life, or when the first 
blade appeared. Just as all the richest 
things in life "come to us," we know not 
how or why, so this new life often comes. 
A blessed gift of God, but why to us, and 
how did it find a place to grow ? Like the 
love of God which passeth knowledge, we 
know the gift is ours to use and to enjoy ; 
why it came and how, we leave to God. 

The growth of the "kingdom of 
heaven " in any one human life is as mys- 
terious, secret and progressive, as in a 



156 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

world. We can measure the growth of 
the kingdom in the world by long periods, 
but in the individual we have only a few 
years. In the one the very greatness of 
the phenomena challenges our attention 
and helps our understanding of them ; but 
in an individual life we need to look with 
closer scrutiny, for the time is short and 
the field is small. 

In any study of human progress, one 
very important thing is to be kept in 
mind, — the highest powers are of slowest 
growth. There are so few possible excep- 
tions to this rule that it is doubtful 
whether it is ever violated. The lowest 
forms of life grow quickly to their end, 
and development becomes 'slower as 
you rise in the scale of being. In man's 
own life the physical body reaches its 
full size and ability in a very few years ; 
the mind requires a longer period for 
its highest development, while the spir- 
itual growth requires more than all of 
this life, and we know not yet its range 
of growth in the world to come. This 



SECRET GROWTH. I 57 

may be because the physical life is 
temporary and the spiritual life everlast- 
ing, while the intellectual life, partaking of 
the natures of both physical and spiritual 
life, is above the one and below the other. 
Or it may be that the longer time is 
needed for the higher quality and value 
of the life lived and the work performed. 
It takes but a moment to prepare a pane 
of common window-glass, but months to 
complete a lense for the telescope. It 
needs but a little time to train the ear to 
the simpler musical sounds, but years of 
careful attention to enjoy the deeper and 
richer harmonies. It is easy work to 
gather a great array of facts, but a greater 
thing and much more difficult to go down 
into the depths of their meanings, and find 
their deepest principles. It is a compar- 
atively easy thing to make an open con- 
fession of faith in Christ ; but it requires 
years of spiritual growth to be able to find 
the deep, unchanging principle of the 
Christ's life and make it the controlling 
power in one's own life. It is so much 



158 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

easier to follow the Master in outward 
act than in inward motive. And this is 
but saying that it is so much easier to do 
than to be, and the command is not do 
perfectly, but "be ye perfect." 

In the individual life we know not how 
or when the seed first fell and began its 
growth. We may be able to tell when 
we first noticed it growing and felt it to 
be our own new life, but even this is not 
possible to us all, so gradual has been the 
growth. The secrecy of the germination 
and first growth is as marked in a single 
life as in the larger field of the world, 
because it is an essential law of grow r th 
to spring up secretly, and press noiselessly 
" towards the mark for the prize" of its 
high calling, the full and ripened harvest. 
The world instinctively doubts a loud pro- 
fession of faith or the appearance of too 
rapid growth, and half expects it to be 
blasted by some untimely frost, or early 
tempest. 

Every true spiritual seed must bring 
forth fruit of itself; we cannot put the 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 1 59 

fruits upon it, and every act of forcing is 
apt to be an interference with a higher 
power at work, and therefore apt to hin- 
der the growth and delay the harvest. 
It is but childish continually to disturb 
the seed to see whether it is growing. 
The lesson we need to learn is taught 
us in the Master's work with His first 
disciple. What patience and hopefulness ! 
How slow of growth they were, and yet 
He was ever prophesying a great har- 
vest from their sowing. Ah, but He saw 
the future, and knew how successful their 
work would be! Did He not also foresee 
the sure growth and abundant fruitfulness 
of the truth, and has he not taught us 
over and over again that the seed of truth, 
"the word of the kingdom, " once growing 
in the "good and honest" heart, cannot 
die, but must bring forth a harvest "after 
its kind ? " " Be ye patient, therefore, until 
the coming of the Lord. Behold the hus- 
bandman waiteth for the precious fruit of 
the earth, being patient over it, until it 
receive the early and latter rain. Be ye 



l6o PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

also patient ; establish your heart ; for the 
presence of the Lord is at hand." 

The seed must spring up and grow of 
itself through the clods and stones of our 
rough natures, with no more attention 
from us than is consistent with the per- 
fect freedom of the spiritual life growing 
silently within us. It is ours to remove 
the weeds, guard against all enemies, keep 
our nights cloudless that the dew may fall, 
and our days uncovered to the full shin- 
ing of the Sun of Righteousness, and then 
to put our trust in the new-born endless 
life within, begotten of Him who "will 
perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ." 

What a light of hope and faith to shine 
in upon all our anxious fears and doubts! 
We long and pray and work, and yet 
feel hopeless. Have we not forgotten 
the growing power of the truth ? Judging 
by the external appearances, we sometimes 
forget that the "inner man" may be 
growing with a power and beauty that 
only occasionally appear in the outer life. 

Conversion, as much as regeneration, 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. I 6 I 

must be a fact in every christian life, but 
it is not always traceable. Many of us 
cannot tell the time of our conversion, 
and many more are in danger of a serious 
mistake when they count some particular 
stirring of their emotions as the time, and 
fact, of their conversion. Most of us can 
tell when we realized the fact, but even 
this sometimes comes so gradually as to 
make it impossible to fix upon any par- 
ticular hour as the time when we were 
turned completely round toward God. 
Yet whether dates and occasions can be 
traced with certainty or not, if the truth 
has germinated and put forth its own 
growth, a real change has begun in the 
life. And it is not merely a change of 
thought, or of purpose, but a real change 
of character. It is a new life, whose 
legitimate harvest is a perfected character. 
It is not that completed harvest of life, 
but it is the springing up of the blade ; the 
ear will follow, and the full harvest shall 
come according to God's law of spiritual 
growth. 

15 



1 62 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

The feeble blade, tested as it grows, 
becomes in due time the strong and fruit- 
ful harvest ; but the new-born life is just 
as true a life as it ever can be. The first 
faint love growing through patient serv- 
ice, the ardent enthusiasm becoming hope- 
ful endurance, the early gladness deepen- 
ing to abiding joy, the buoyancy living 
on into quietness and peace — this is not 
change, but development. It is the true 
and natural growth of the soul. The 
inner principle is not weaker, nor the 
outer beauty less, but both are grown into 
truer harmony and higher fruitfulness. 
And this last it is that indicates the 
approach of harvest, and proves the nature 
of the growth, " By their fruits ye shall 
know them." The blade and the ear are 
as truly alive as the ripened grain, but are 
not yet able to give life in reproduction. 
They receive, absorb, in order to ripen 
and reproduce their fruits, and their life is 
the same as when at last, more fully 
grown, they give forth their fruits to the 
husbandman. 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 1 63 

We must not expect fruit immedi- 
ately from the sowing, for we need to 
remember that in the spiritual kingdom, 
as in the natural, we have all the phe- 
nomena of growth. Sometimes, instead 
of a long period of gradual growth, there 
is a very rapid development, as if the 
forces of life were under some unusual 
pressure. The manifestations of life are 
not alike in all who truly live, although 
the laws of life remain the same. Some, 
as the tender blade of grass or grain, may 
not realize the rich store of life within 
them until the grain is almost ready for 
the harvest. Others, as the fruit-tree 
blossoming, immediately challenge atten- 
tion to the vigor and beauty of their new 
life. The one reaching its highest beauty 
and value together in an abundant harvest, 
the other passing through beauty to the 
more valuable reproductive fruitfulness. 

" The ear'' between the blade and the 
harvest, between the blossom and the ripe 
fruit. This is a dangerous time to many 
a true christian soul. He has lost the 



164 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

vividness of his first spiritual experiences, 
and begins to doubt the fact of his con- 
version, and often mourns the decadence 
of his spiritual life. There may be good 
reason for his anxiety, but we must not 
forget that a natural growth leads through 
a period of green fruit of bitter taste, 
when there is neither beauty of blossom 
nor ripeness of fruit. The green grain 
may not be as beautiful as the blossom, 
but it is of greater value because nearer 
the harvest. To pass out of a first stage 
of vivid experiences to a time of dullness, 
and even of questioning; from the early 
joy to the quiet, perhaps stubborn, endur- 
ance of storms and resistance of enemies ; 
may be only a hiding within the sheltering 
husk for a surer growth. The blade must 
grow through the green ear to the full 
harvest, and yet we sometimes distress 
our souls with a charge of decline when 
we are really in higher stage of growth. 

But we must not hide from ourselves 
the special dangers of this stage of chris- 
tian life. For as the grain, when green 



"THE BLADE, THEN THE EAR." 1 65 

in the ear, is in danger from unfavorable 
condition of weather, and from all man- 
ner of insects that would feed upon and 
kill it, so in the spiritual growth this is a 
time of especial danger from doubt and 
fear. But we must not think there is no 
fruit of the Spirit in us because we do not 
find any of it fully ripe. This is the time 
when the Husbandman is most patient 
with us, expecting of us only a careful 
guarding of the life He has given us, while 
it grows to the harvest. 

It may not be amiss to notice some of 
these conditions which are within our con- 
trol. The seed is planted, and has life 
within itself. The soil "spontaneously 
bringeth forth fruit ;" its powers of sustain- 
ing the seed are in its original endowment. 
The rain and the atmosphere, the sunshine 
and the night, of this earthly life, will all 
attend the growing spirit with their vari- 
ous ministry. Our work is not with their 
production, but with our reception of them, 
our attitude towards them. We are to 
make all things without us minister to the 



1 66 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

new life within us, thus transforming the 
temporary into sustenance for the eternal. 
This cannot be done by giving all our 
attention to these external conditions, nor 
by looking only at our hearts to watch the 
growth, but far more by "looking unto 
Him who is the author and finisher of our 
faith." For a man does not grow God- 
like by studying only, or even largely, 
what he is in himself, — this is to mould 
his ideal and receive his impulse from 
himself ; but by much patient thought of 
God and God's ideal for man, does he 
grow. 

Richard Baxter, in his autobiography, 
expressed this thought perfectly when he 
said : " I was once wont to meditate most 
on my own heart, and to dwell all at home 
and look little higher. I was still poring 
either on my sins or my wants, or exam- 
ining my sincerity ; but now, though I am 
greatly convinced of the need of heart 
acquaintance, yet I see more of a higher 
work ; that I should look oftener upon 
Christ, and God, and heaven, than upon 



"when the fruit is ripe." 167 

my own heart I would have one thought 
at home upon myself and sins, and many 
thoughts above upon the high, and amia- 
ble, and beautifying objects I am 

more solicitous about my duty to God, 
and less solicitous about His dealings with 
me. 

"But when the fruit is ripe, straight- 
way he putteth forth the sickle, because 
the harvest is co?ne." 

This is the last touch of the parable, 
and it is full of power and beauty. " Is 
ripe," literally, offers itself, delivers itself 
up to the husbandman, as if pressing for- 
ward to the next stage of its development. 
The grain is not merely an article of food 
to nourish life, but also a seed to repro- 
duce its own life in larger measure. How 
natural that it should be eager to go 
forward on its mission. It has passed 
through all the stages of growth in obedi- 
ence to the decree written within its own 
nature, and now returns its fruits to the 
husbandman for whatever use he may 
have for them, 



1 68 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

It is not more natural for a head' of 
wheat fully ripe to drop its grains into the 
soil about the stalk, than it is for a ripe 
christian spirit to drop the seeds of life 
into neighboring minds and hearts. The 
harvest is come whenever the grain is ripe. 
So it is in the kingdom of Christ, not 
waiting for the end of the world, but giv- 
ing forth seed as fast as it is ripe, until at 
length the whole character, fully ready, 
is gathered into the heavenly garner. 

In thinking of the harvest referred to 
in the Parable of the Sower, the fearful 
imagery of the fourteenth chapter of Rev- 
elation is forced upon the mind ; but in 
this parable, the continual ripening and 
ever-increasing abundance of the harvest 
recall the prophecy of Amos, " Behold the 
days are coming, saith the Lord, that the 
ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and 
the treader of grapes him that soweth 
seed." So vast will be the field to be 
cultivated, so rapid the growth and so 
abundant the harvest, that seed-time and 
harvest will be as one. How true this is 



"WHEN THE FRUIT IS RIPE." 169 

of the Masters kingdom ! In every field, 
sowing and reaping go side by side. 
Indeed, in every life this is true ; for what 
Christian, who really lives, fails to sow 
even while he is reaping ? Of all the 
grains that fall into his life, none nourish 
him more than those he scatters abroad 
to bless other lives. 

Every true harvest delivers itself will- 
ingly to the husbandman, needing no 
forcing; but the unripe grain ca#not be 
beaten from its husk, selfishly refusing to 
give itself forth for another harvest. 
Lives that are not ripe enough to deliver 
their spiritual fruits spontaneously, may 
need cultivation, perhaps a little urging, 
in order to aid their growth ; but forcing 
is always dangerous. Yet in our impa- 
tience to enlarge the harvest, we are 
tempted to force unripe grain into the 
sowing, while the life is yet " in the ear," 
needing all its powers for receiving strength 
to grow — unnaturally compelling it to 
reproduce. A forced plant is very apt to 
be a frail one. Nor must we think that 



I70 PARABLE OF GROWTH. 

the full harvest can be gathered in this 
life. The life for which we have sown is 
endless, and the fruits are too rich and 
abundant to be all gathered on earth. 
Immortal life is too vast to give forth in 
this temporary world anything more than 
a few indications of its nobility and wealth. 
Heaven is heaven to us because of what 
we are becoming, not simply a beautiful 
home for what we are in this life. Having 
the power of immortal life within our 
souls, we look for nothing less than end- 
less growth. Having the image of God 
born again within our spirits, we will not 
lower our ideal to anything less than per- 
fection in His likeness, — perfect as God in 
kind of life, and in degree of likeness ever 
growing. 

How can we become discouraged, with 
this word of the Master in our minds ! 

Souls endowed with endless life, heaven 
and likeness to God as the goal to be 
reached, and truth with inherent powers of 
endless growth to lift the soul to its high 
destiny,- — surely while every mind must 



PATIENCE AND HOPE. 171 

bow reverently and humbly before the 
greatness of the christian life, every heart 
must exult at the thought of the aim 
above and the power within. 

" Blessed be the God and Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to 
His great mercy begat us again unto a 
living hope by the resurrection of jesus 
Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance 
incorruptible, and undefiled, and that 
fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for 
you, who by the power of God are 
guarded through faith unto a salvation 
ready to be revealed in the last time .... 
having been begotten again, not of cor- 
ruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through 
the word of God, which liveth and 
abideth." 



' Choose well; your choice is 
Brief, and yet endless." — Goethe. 

' Others I doubt not, if not we, 
The issue of our toils shall see; 
Young children gather as their own 
The harvest that the dead had sown, 
The dead, forgotten and unknown." 

— C lough. 

1 A wonderful thing is a seed! 
The one thing deathless forever; 
The one thing changeless, utterly true; 
Forever old and forever new, 
And fickle and faithless never. 

' Plant virtue and virtue will bloom; 
Plant ill and ill will grow. 
You can sow to-day; to-morrow will bring 
The blossom that proves what sort of thing 
Is the seed — the seed you sow." 

1 One base deed, with prolific power, 
Like its cursed stock, engenders more." 

' Blood for blood and blow for blow, — 
Thou shalt reap as thou didst sow. 
Age to age with hoary wisdom 
Speaketh thus to man." — Aeschylus. 



THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: 
for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap." (Galatians 6:7.) 

This is the law of the harvest. Every- 
thing that hath life carries within itself the 
principle of its own existence, that which 
determines the method by which it 
develops and the end for which it lives. 
Whatever may come from without to 
modify or change the life, must act through 
its principle of life ; and, although this 
modification or change come by some 
command, or law, it must act in harmony 
with the law ruling within. Ought we to 
draw so broad a distinction as we usually 
do between the law written in our hearts 
and the law given to us by revelation ? 
Both are given of God, have the same 
work and purpose, and are mutually cor- 
roborative. One of the first exercises of 
an awakened conscience is to testify to 
the truth of God's revealed law, and of 

16 



174 THE LAW 0F THE HARVEST. 

the awakened heart to respond in peni- 
tence and prayer to God's infinite love. 
This correspondence between the two 
expressions of God's law for human life is 
clearly indicated in this law of the harvest. 
A field produces according to the seed 
beneath its surface, and the fertility of the 
soil. The same law holds good in every 
soil, whether in the physical, intellectual, 
or spiritual world. The whole world is 
busy sowing and growing for a future 
harvest. In the physical world, how 
eagerly the germ of life within the seed 
bursts its bonds and strives to reach its 
appropriate harvest. All the various 
forms of vegetable life multiplying them- 
selves many fold, a single seed dying to 
produce its many successors for the 
autumnal ingathering. The animal world, 
by increase and dispersion, is taking 
possession of every part of the earth, 
while men and their brute servants are 
ever urging the vegetable world to a 
more vigorous development to support 
the rapidly increasing animal life. 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH." I 75 

In the intellectual and moral world, how 
eagerly men are sowing for the future 
reaping. Thought-germs of every kind 
and in every form of utterance are striv- 
ing for growth towards the harvest. In 
lecture, book, sermon, newspaper, conver- 
sation, in the very look of the face and the 
shrug of the shoulders, men are busy sow- 
ing and cultivating Parents and teachers 
are diligently scattering seeds for growth 
in soil more valuable and productive than 
any that farmer ever ploughed, and out of 
all this seed the final harvest of the child's 
life shall be gathered. 

Every human soul is entrusted with soil, 
seed, and opportunity for the required 
harvest. Your life-soil is fertile, endures 
forever, and is forever your own. You 
cannot sell it. You cannot rent it. You 
can mortgage it only to sin, whose certain 
foreclosure is death. The seed may be 
as immortal as truth from God, or deadly 
as satanic error. The opportunity is all 
your life, with its wealth of resources, its 
innumerable calls of duty, and its wide 



176 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

opportunity for truest growth and noblest 
work. 

The law of the harvest is simple and 
certain. According to the kind, quality 
and quantity of the seed sown, the fertil- 
ity of the soil, and the amount and quality 
of labor bestowed on the sowing and the 
cultivation, so shall the harvest be. 

The Apostle starts out with the warn- 
ing, " Be not deceived; God is not 
mocked." Do not deceive yourselves into 
thinking that you are deceiving God. No 
formal service that is heartless, no crying 
" Lord, Lord, have we not done wonder- 
ful things in Thy name ?" when the spirit 
is dead, will deceive Him who looketh 
upon the heart. And yet is there not a 
general hope, certainly a wish, that God 
may count what little good we have done, 
as some sort of atonement for what we 
are? What is this but expecting Him to 
take our occasional good deeds, and draw 
from them a permanent good character. 

We cannot expect Him to violate His 
own laws of life in order to save us from 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. I J J 

the appropriate results of our neglect or 
wilful disobedience. God does not have 
special cases. Every germ of life pro- 
duces after its kind, according to a per- 
fectly definite law of development. This 
law, so forcibly stated by the Apostle, 
contains several particulars. 

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap. As the seed is in kind, 
so must the harvest be. The sower must 
choose his harvest in his choice of the 
seed. A man who sows to the physical 
life shall reap a harvest for the physical 
life. One who sows all his seed for the 
intellectual life shall reap the intellectual 
harvest. In like manner, one who sows 
to the spirit shall reap a spiritual harvest. 
You have the power to choose which of 
these you will sow, but you have no right 
to expect that you m£y sow one kind of 
seed and reap another kind of harvest. 

Your power of choice lies with the 
seed ; you cannot change the law of the 
harvest, which must be as the sowing. 
You may sow but one kind of seed, or 



178 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

mingle all good seed in proper propor- 
tion ; but whatsoever you sow that shall 
you reap. 

All good is arranged by the Apostle in 
two classes, temporary good, — " He that 
soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption ;" 
and permanent good, — " He that soweth 
to the spirit shall reap life everlasting." 

Each after its kind. 

The two classes have many things in 
common and many resemblances, but in 
kind they are as different as earth and 
heaven, as temporary and everlasting. 
Both may be ours, for we get what we 
sow for. A man may sow to the spirit, 
without being blessed w T ith physical com- 
fort And because he has sown abun- 
dantlytof the choicest spiritual seed is no 
especial reason that he should be pros- 
perous in his physical life. To have both, 
he must sow for both. 

Christ says, "Blessed are they which 
do hunger and thirst after righteousness : 
for they shall be filled." What with ? 
Righteousness. Just as those who hun- 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. I 79 

ger and thirst after this world's pros- 
perity shall be filled with that. Each 
class gets what it seeks. " Honesty is the 
best policy" for this life and that which 
is to come, but that is not saying that the 
honest man will get rich, or keep free 
from disease and sorrow. A man may be 
a good man and get rich, or he may be 
just as good and remain poor. Or a man 
may choose to get rich and have all the 
comforts of this life, without a thought of 
the everlasting life. 

" Abraham's bosom," heaven, was the 
legitimate harvest of the seed sown by 
Lazarus ; but he had no more right to 
expect that he would receive the home 
and the luxury which the rich man en- 
joyed, than the rich man had to expect 
heaven as the harvest of his life. Each 
got what he sowed for. 

A man cannot sow to worldly success 
only, and have any right to expect a spir- 
itual victory, a victory over death. " He 
that soweth to the flesh shall (from that 
sowing) reap corruption," and corruption 



l8o THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

is only another name for death, the end 
of all flesh. Every man must sow for 
the harvest he wants. The student who 
would become a learned man knows that 
he must sow years of self-denial, and 
close, hard study. He has no right to 
complain of his harvest of ignorance and 
inefficiency if he has never sown the seeds 
from which a richer harvest could grow. 
You have no right to complain that 
although you are a devoted Christian, 
serving God with fervent spirit, yet your 
neighbor, who cares for nothing but his 
own success, is growing rich and influen- 
tial, while you are hardly able to pay your 
just debts. You sowed for peace of mind 
and all the christian graces here, and eter- 
nal life in the world to come. Your 
neighbor sowed for worldly success. 
You are both getting what you sowed for. 
If you want wealth and influence, you 
must sow accordingly. The Master said of 
the hypocritical Pharisees, whose very 
religious services were performed for the 
praise of men, " They have their reward." 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH." l8l 

They sowed for the praise of men and 
they got it. 

The man who sows for worldly success 
has a right to expect worldly success, but 
he has no right to expect anything else. 
If the Christian expects to have worldly 
success because he is a Christian, he mis- 
interprets God's law of cause and effect. 
What a man sows, he shall reap. He 
cannot expect a harvest of physical com- 
fort from a sowing of spiritual seed. Inci- 
dentally, the spiritual growth will help the 
growth of all true good, even physical 
good ; but the seed must be planted for 
every part of life's harvest. 

But, some may say, there is a difference 
between the spiritual law of. growth and 
the physical, in this that God loves the 
sinner, and nature does not ; God forgives 
sin, and nature does not. Because God 
is love shall He violate laws which are 
altogether good and pure, laws which are 
the most perfect expression of His love, 
as of every other attribute of His nature? 
His love is deep as eternity, mighty as 



1 82 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

omnipotence, broad and rich as human 
need, and helpful as the Christ himself ; 
but that love is shown in the perfect ful- 
fillment of law, not in the violation of it. 
Christ '• came not to destrov the law, but to 
fulfill." And the divine love was dis- 
played as much in the atoning death as in 
the obedient service. 

God's law of command never violates 
His law of principle, for what He speaks 
in revelation is in strict harmony with His 
utterance in the inherent, abiding princi- 
ples of man's moral nature. 

Suppose you have a young almond stock 
and want a harvest of apricots, how will 
you secure the change of fruit? You will 
graft an apricot stem into the almond 
stock, and the fruit will be apricots. Thus 
you change the harvest by changing that 
which produces it. But then I read in this 
book of God that it is no exception to this 
law, or violation of it, that God forgives 
sin, but in strictest accordance with it. 
u Ye must be born again." The seed is 
changed in order to change the harvest. 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH." I 83 

The law is that a seed can produce but 
one harvest, and that the harvest shall be 
of the same kind as the sowing. You 
may choose to sow either to the flesh or 
to the spirit, but you must not expect to 
gather both the physical and the spiritual 
harvest from one sowing. 

Many of you are young, and you often 
hear this exhortation, but has it no mean- 
ing that it need not be repeated ? You 
are sowing seed with a free hand in very 
productive soil — what shall the harvest be ? 
The answer is plain — exactly what the seed 
was. Do you think that you can sow any 
kind of seed now, and then reap in later 
years any harvest you may wish ? 

There is in a distant state a man whose 
life is full of good works. He wears to 
the world a cheerful face, and helps every 
life he meets. But there is a load on his 
heart that only the redemption of his body 
can remove. He did a great wrong in his 
youth. After his conversion he made 
every reparation in his power, but it was 
too late to remove all the harm, and the 



184 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

sorrow of that memory goes with him 
through life. 

Say what you please about what a man 
ought to do, how he ought to feel at peace 
when he has done everything in his power 
to repair his wrong, and by a penitent, 
humble and devoted life is doing all he 
can to help others. The law of God and 
the law of nature, — if you can thus sepa- 
rate two methods of the same law — require 
that every harvest shall be as the sowing. 
And though a man may be born again, he 
cannot forget the old life,with its joys and 
its remorse, until the new life has swallowed 
up in its ever-increasing abundance all 
the past, and swept even its memories 
clean. 

The sins of youth are sure to produce 
some harvest. God forgives, and plants 
the seed of a new spiritual life, but He 
does not enable you to forget. And one 
mark of this new life is its power to 
deepen the soul's remorse for sin, even 
while it increases the longing for right- 
eousness. "We have no right to expect that 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH." I 85 

in later years we shall reap the harvest of 
honest speech and candid mind, when we 
filled our youth with insincere words and 
uncharitable thoughts. Not only will the 
reputation earned in youth cling to us 
but the habits of thought and tone of 
spirit will influence and modify our 
characters to the end of life. The most 
fearful of all dangers to an immortal soul 
is that doom which Christ said had fallen 
upon some who heard the Parable of the 
Sower, "their heart is waxed gross," they 
had lost their capability for any higher 
life. We forget that " God requireth that 
which is past," because we forget that 
there is no past with God, and fail to 
remember that nothing dies, and that 
everything produces its own harvest. 
Remember the timely warning of the 
wise preacher in Ecclesiastes, 1 1 : 9 : 
" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; • 
and let thy heart cheer thee in the days 
of thy youth, and walk in the ways of 
thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes ; 
but know thou that, for all these things 

17 



1 86 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

God will bring thee to judgment." It is 
the same law ; as thou sowest thou shall 
reap. 

Neither does God with His forgiveness 
send any new power to the body to escape 
the harvest of the earlier sowing. You 
may have become a true child of God, 
but if your youth has been spent in indo- 
lence, idleness and dissipation, you will 
feel the loss of power to the end of your 
days. Not only so, but if a man in early 
spring-time sows a crop of thorns, he will 
not only gather no good crop, but he is 
thus far weakened by loss of time and 
skill and opportunity when he would be 
very glad to sow a better seed. Many 
people who wish to "do good" after their 
days of business and youthful pleasure 
are over, find that they have lost their 
aptitude for it ; sometimes have lost even 
' their capability for work so different from 
what has busied them in all their earlier 
years. They sowed one kind of seed, and 
they must not expect to reap another 
kind of harvest. The old Latin proverb 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. I 87 

urges that "you must become an old man 
when young, if you would be a young man 
when old ;" suggesting that you must apply 
the temperance and wisdom of maturity 
to youthful inclinations, if you would pre- 
serve the strength and vigor of youth to 
old age. As Pope puts it — 

" For fainting age what cordial drop remains, 
If our intemperate youth the vessel drains ? " 

Many of us who are yet young would 
repudiate our future selves with all the 
zeal and loathing of Hazael of old, should 
some Elisha make that future plain to us. 

We shall reap as we sow, and yet some- 
times people (not thoughtful people) say 
that if one is only sincere it matters little 
what a man believes. Wheat and rye 
look very much alike to one who is not 
familiar with them, but suppose a farmer, 
honestly believing that he is sowing wheat, 
actually scatters rye broadcast over his 
field, will he get a crop of wheat for his 
honesty ? A man will get what he sows — 
whatever he may think he is sowing. 

There is one fallacy in our reasoning 



1 88 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

about goodness that needs to be noticed. 
The goodness which Christ teaches and 
what is called the world's goodness, or 
moral goodness, are different in kind. The 
fruits bear a close resemblance. Indeed, 
the world's highest morality is a harvest 
of our Master's sowing. Our noblest 
view of life and our highest conception of 
God come from Christ's life and teach- 
ings. Yet there are men who deny 
Christ, and yet want to claim God as their 
Father. They say, perhaps, that science 
has taught them this view of God. Yet 
science tells us very little about God, 
except that He exists and is all-powerful. 
These men take the view of God which 
Christianity has taught the world, and 
proclaim it as a discovery of their own 
skill and knowledge. Christ's own 
answer to all such is given in St. John 8 : 
42 : " If God were your Father, ye would 
love Me : for I came forth and am come 
from God." But whatever their view of 
God, and however they may have received 
it, there is a difference in kind between the 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH." I 89 

" moral life" and the spiritual, and the 
final harvests must bear the same differ- 
ence. These men are entitled to all the 
reward of a true morality, with all it 
means of health and comfort and good 
influence. But they have no right to 
expect that their earthly life, beautiful as 
it is, will grow to a harvest in God's like- 
ness. They have sowed the seed of the 
highest earthly life, and they shall reap 
accordingly, but the harvest will be no 
higher or mpre enduring than the sowing. 
It is still " sowing to the flesh," and only 
he who sows to the spirit shall reap " life 
everlasting." The one is living by earthly 
motives, according to an earthly standard, 
and must always measure himself by the 
lives of men like himself. The other is 
moved by heavenly motives, according to 
a divine standard of life, and always 
measures himself by the perfect life of 
Christ, God's ideal life for man. One 
life is guided by custom, and controlled 
by external influences. The other is 
guided by the principle of a new-born life 



I9O THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

within, and controlled by a divine spirit 
to whom he has surrendered his life. The 
" moral life" has its life and reward this 
side of death, for the grave is the end of 
its growth. It is a beautiful and fruitful 
earthly plant, soon reaching maturity and 
death, but its seeds reproduce only in an 
earthly soil. The spiritual life never 
reaches maturity on earth, but requires a 
spiritual world for its fullest growth. It 
aims to bring forth all the good fruits of 
the " moral life" as a legitimate harvest 
of its own life on earth, but looks for a still 
higher fruitfulness in an unending world. 
The " moral life" touches no higher power 
than its own, supported by the pressure 
from without of forces that are altogether 
earthly. The forces that control such a life 
rarely touch the mass of men, and have 
at best only a reforming power, and that 
is chiefly negative. These forces come 
into a life with all the prohibitions of the 
law, but with none of the gospel of a new 
life. It commands the life to put forth 
its own greatest power, but it gives no 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. I9I 

new power. The moralist is one who 
tries to live up to the standard of morals 
reached by the world under the influence 
of Christianity. The Christian is one in 
whom Christ has begotten a new life, 
which is lifting him by steady growth 
towards perfection. One may be a 
reformed man, but the other is a regener- 
ated man. One life is the fruit of earthly 
seed, and the whole growth will be as the 
seed, earthly. The other life is growing 
towards an eternal harvest from a divine 
seed of God's own planting. The one is 
begotten of the best spirit of the world, 
the other is born of the Spirit of God. 
Each after its kind shall reap a harvest, 
but the two harvests will be as different 
as the sowing. 

Prof. J. C. Shairp, in his " Studies in 
Poetry and Philosophy/' uses the follow- 
ing strong and suggestive language : 
" Character, which, when regarded from a 
merely moral point of view, almost inevi- 
tably becomes a building up from our 
own internal resources, takes altogether 



I92 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

another aspect when it is seen that true 
character is in the last resort determined 
by the attitude in which the spirit stands 
to God. Then it comes to be felt that 
the rightness men search for cannot be 
evolved from within, must go beyond self, 
must fall back on a simple receptivity, 
receiving the rightness and the right- 
making power, which they have not in 
themselves, from out of the great reser- 
voir of righteousness which is in God. 
Only on thus falling back on God, and 
feeling himself to be, as of everything 
else, so of righteousness, a recipient, is a 
man truly rightened. Thus the last moral 
experience and the first upward look of 
religion agree in one, ' A man can receive 
nothing except it be given him from 
above.' " 

Again the harvest must be as the sowing 
in quality. After a man decides what 
kind of grain he must sow in order to 
secure the kind of harvest he wants to 
reap, he is careful to select a good quality 
of that kind of grain, for he knows that 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. 1 93 

the quality of the harvest is affected by 
the quality of the seed. A good farmer, 
when he has decided to sow wheat, seeks 
to get for his seed the best quality of 
wheat in the market ; and the student, 
when he has decided to study any partic- 
ular theme, seeks to find the ablest teach- 
ers and most helpful books, so that by the 
best methods and the best quality of seed 
he may be sure of a good quality of har- 
vest. So it should be in the spiritual 
sowing. It is needful for us all to have the 
choicest spiritual seed, if we would have 
the richest spiritual harvest. This seed is 
the word of God. The words of men 
may be wise and very helpful ; but every 
Christian knows that the power to sanc- 
tify is the word of truth. The faith that 
enables us to receive aright the blessings 
of God, " cometh by hearing, and hearing 
by the word of God." For this there is 
no safe substitute. Nor must the quantity 
be regarded as an unimportant matter, for 
if one wants to reap bountifully, he must 
sow bountifully. No farmer is so igno- 



194 THE LAW 0F THE HARVEST. 

rant as to do on his farm what so many 
intelligent and cautious people do in the 
spiritual work of their lives ; sow as little 
as possible, and yet hope to reap a very 
great abundance. Sowing to the flesh a 
hundred dollars for every dime they sow 
to the spirit ; sowing a week's work to the 
flesh for every hour they give to spiritual 
work ; sowing a thousand fold for the 
body over the handful they scatter for the 
spiritual harvest. As they sow in kind 
and quality and quantity, so shall they 
reap. 

Another particular of this law is that of 
increase. You plant a single grain and it 
gives you in return a score like itself. 
Your harvest is not according to the 
labor and money you expend upon it. 
These alone do not give the full value of 
the product. The natural fertility of the 
soil, and the ability of the seed to multi- 
ply itself so abundantly, must be consid- 
ered. This power of multiplication, the 
seed has in itself ; but there is another 
mode of increase that must not be over- 



"WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. I95 

looked, that by diffusion or dispersion. 
Whether it be thistle-down floating on the 
air, the lady-slipper exploding to scatter 
its little seed-bullets, or the seeds of trees 
and grass and grain carried by the wind, 
or the birds, or on the bosom of flowing 
waters, far and wide the life is dispersed 
to grow and multiply in new lands. 
Everyone recognizes this law in nature, 
every student knows how true it is in the 
intellectual life, and the word of God 
says, as we have seen in the Parable of 
Growth, that it is as true in the spiritual 
life. You cannot keep either spiritual 
good or evil from increasing. The good 
we do and the evil we do go on producing 
their harvest to the end, multiplying and 
diffusing their influence, each after its 
kind. One would think that no exhortation 
could be needed to make us cautious in 
our every word and deed in presence of 
such a responsibility. But we are apt to 
forget the wisest admonition, grown famil- 
iar by its frequent repetition, even as we 
are apt to overlook the greatest values in 



I96 " THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

things grown customary by our constant 
use of them. 

"To do good and communicate, forget 
not, for with such sacrifices God is well 
pleased/' " Herein is my Father glori- 
fied, that ye bear much fruit." These, to 
one who seeks to "sow to the spirit/' are 
not mere commands, but are the very 
principle of his life. They are commands 
of duty, but they are eagerly accepted as 
in perfect harmony with his own new-born 
spiritual life, and the grain does not more 
eagerly accept the sunshine and the rain 
for its growth to the harvest than does the 
earnest Christian accept these commands 
and the opportunities they give for growth 
towards the final harvest of his own full- 
grown and ripened life. 

By a different emphasis, we may learn 
another lesson, which is also suggested 
by the first sentence of the Parable of 
Growth. " Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap." 

Every true life is one of activity. No 
man drifts to real success, for while he 



"WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. I97 

may suddenly and without effort secure 
possession of great wealth or high posi- 
tion, he has not that discipline of self 
which comes with the labor of achieve- 
ment. In no department of life does one 
gather a good harvest without a previous 
sowing. Hence the work, the manner of 
its performance, and the spirit of the 
worker, all enter into the life-problem of 
every human soul. And this is true, not 
only in the great affairs of life, but also in 
every little thing. For everything, 
whether great or small, is both a seed 
and a harvest, the seed for future growth 
and the fruit of a previous sowing. Con^ 
tempt of littles may be contempt of the 
greatest values, for we never know how 
much of growth may lie within the small- 
est seed. You cast a little word of truth 
into a young heart, and never knew that 
from your sowing there sprang up great 
principles to control an immortal life. 
Nor did you see the many seeds that have 
fallen from that life to spring up and 
grow in other souls unto endless life. 



18 



I98 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

A divine spirit makes everything divine 
that it touches, and a consecrated spirit 
consecrates every work it performs, 
whether the world call it small or large. 
As Mrs. Gaskel's " Ruth " expresses it : 

" There is a right way and a wrong 
way of setting about everything — and to 
my thinking, the right way is to take a 
thing up heartily, if it is only making a 
bed. Why, dear, ah me ! making a bed 
may be done after a very christian 
fashion, I take it, or else what's to come 
of such as me in heaven, who've had little 
enough time on earth for clapping our- 
selves down on our knees for set prayers." 

Any man is great who does all his work 
for the spirit and the duty in it, who feels 
that each lowly task may be so performed 
as to help the noblest spiritual, growth. 
Religion "put on " is a very deadly thing, 
like the famed shirt of Nessus, putting 
the wearer to a miserable death. But 
religion that springs from the heart, and 
flows naturally with consecrating power 
into every walk of life, is a very noble 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH." 199 

thing, making the life beautiful in all 
abiding graces, and " fruitful in every 
good work." But such a life comes not 
by accident. Its own appropriate sowing 
and its own natural growth must precede 
it. Evil crops grow without any care, but 
good seed must be sown and carefully 
cultivated. All plants and trees pro- 
ducing food for man are short-lived, and 
require constant care to prevent their 
degeneration. Even the famous bread- 
fruit, which we once thought did not come 
under this rule, is no exception to the 
law ; for of the two varieties of the bread- 
fruit-tree, the wild propagates itself, and 
is worthless for food, while that which 
yields food is seedless, and requires con- 
stant care for its growth. 

In the spiritual world, the very labor of 
sowing and cultivating enters into the 
quality of the fruit, and prepares the soul 
for the proper enjoyment and use of the 
harvest. The great purpose of the 
activity to which Christ urges his fol- 
lowers is to crowd out the evil growth. by 



200 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

the more abundant sowing and cultivation 
of the good. " Sow beside all waters," 
however weed-grown and stony, for it is 
thus that Christ would ''destroy the 
works of the devil." Indeed, the Master 
would teach us to measure our life less by 
the number of its years than by the spirit 
of its service and the abundance of its 
fruits. How can any soul accustomed 
only to reaping, without a thought of sow- 
ing, ever rightly appreciate the self-denial 
and never-resting service of Christ? 
What can he understand of the joys of 
Him who delighted to do God's will, and 
of the heaven that rewards the faithful 
steward, when he is a stranger to the 
spirit of devotion to the work of minister- 
ing unto others? The Saviour's admo- 
nitions concerning hearing might well be 
applied to sowing ; take heed how ye sow, 
and take heed what ye sow. Before sowing, 
decide what you will sow, and that will be 
decided by what you want to reap in the 
harvest. And do not overlook the fact 
that this law applies to every part of life. 



" WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH. 201 

To public life and to private, To the 
school and the church, to the store and 
the home, to politics and to business. 

If you want to reap success in business, 
you must sow accordingly ; but remember 
that you may be so "diligent in business" 
(or in house-keeping, or in study) as to 
become unable to "be fervent in spirit." 
Perhaps you say, " I will first be success- 
ful in business, and th£n with my wealth 
I will serve the Lord with all faithfulness." 
Nay, if you do not continue " fervent in 
spirit, serving the Lord," while you are 
increasing you wealth, you will never 
properly unite them afterwards. Much 
of the devotion to business which the 
world applauds is the very process that 
is destroying spiritual growth. Many of 
our business men, pressing forward 
eagerly for wealth, need to consider this 
law of life which God has written in such 
unqualified language. 

Ask yourselves whether, when you shall 
have secured possession of wealth, you 
will be richer or poorer than now ? You 



202 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

will possess much, but will you be more 
or less than now ? Be watchful, lest you 
choke your spiritual life, God's harvest, 
with the too abundant growth of your 
own earthly harvest ! " It is required of 
stewards that they be found faithful." 
Not only when they have laid by all that 
they want for themselves, but from the 
first moment of life. 

Every moment this law is in full opera- 
tion in every life, yet do we not often try 
to make ourselves believe that its action 
is not certain, or at least that it is far off 
in the future ? We treat life as if it were 
a mere succession of acts and thoughts 
and words, when these are but the leaves 
and blossoms and partial fruits of a life 
which is unbroken and endless. Thinking 
that we can at any moment cease to per- 
form the acts, we forget that they are but 
expressions of a life steadily growing to a 
harvest from the sowing of all the past. 
For all life is an unbroken series of begin- 
nings, as well as of harvests. The slight 
inclination, which we may have inherited, 



" THAT SHALL HE REAP. 203 

may seem to us a very small matter, yet 
from it may grow a wish, an affection, an 
act, a habit, all doing their part in shap- 
ing and establishing our character. How 
careless we are of the seeds that fall into 
our lives, and the lives of those for whom 
we are responsible ! We pay so little 
heed to the sowing, but when too late to 
destroy the evil, and cultivate the good 
to advantage, we curse ourselves for our 
folly, and plead for God to pity us. We 
are apt to think of retribution as some- 
thing which belongs exclusively to a dis- 
tant future and another world, yet every 
soul carries within itself the prophecy of 
its own judgment. For retribution is 
implied in every threat of conscience, and 
illustrated in every controversy between 
good and evil for the control of the will. 
In every temptation, the will is solicited 
by opposing feelings, and we can do no 
more than to choose the best or the worst 
that is before us. If we choose the worst 
thing, is it not the wickedest thing we are 
able to do at that moment ? It is no 



204 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

palliation to say that others have done 
worse things than we ever have, for they 
did no more than the wickedest thing that 
lay within their reach, and that we have 
done. We know that in every temptation 
there is a choice between two things, 
and these two things are not of equal 
moral worth, so that we are ever choosing 
either the best thing or the worst. Thus 
we are ever casting the seed for a future 
harvest, habituating the will to obey the 
purer affections in its decisions, and quick- 
ening these affections to more vigorous 
growth ; or putting the will more and 
more under the control of the evil in us, 
and thus determining our characters away 
from good and from God. 

We know that neither good nor evil' 
receives its full retribution in this world ; 
every life's experience is proof of that. 
Conscience punishes the most spiritual 
with the keenest remorse for sin, while it 
speaks but feebly in those who dwell in 
crime. But the law abides forever; 
" whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 



44 THAT SHALL HE REAP. 205 

also reap." " Even as I have seen, they 
that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, 
reap the same." (Job 4: 8.) What a 
fearful meaning this gives to that last proc- 
lamation of this same law : " Seal not up 
the words of the prophecy of this book ; 
for the time is at hand. He that is 
unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still : 
and he which is filthy, let him be filthy 
still : and he that his holy, let him be holy 
still. And behold I come quickly ; and 
my reward (wages) is with me, to give 
every man according as his work shall be." 
(Rev. 22: 1 1, 12.) 

Solemn and threatening as this law may 
be in one direction, it is full of comfort 
and encouragement in another. A sower 
of good seed has only to look at the won- 
derful growth of "the word of the king- 
dom," to see how certainly this law 
applies to good as well as to evil. It will 
make him penitent for the evil he has 
done, but it should make him diligent and 
hopeful in every faithful service of good. 

Diligent, to make the future sowing 



206 THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. 

both good and bountiful. Hopeful, for 
the harvest shall be as the sowing, for 
every good seed carries within itself the 
decree of its own certain growth to the 
final harvest, and is guarded and nour- 
ished by the blessing of " the Lord of the 
harvest." 

Every seed is a beginning; if the seed 
be true and good, it is the beginning of 
blessings that cannot die. For your own 
soul, for your children, for all lives that 
feel you influence, have seeds of blessing 
ready in the abundant fruitfulness of your 
own life. Remember "the Sower/' who 
never came in contact with human life 
without leaving some seeds of comfort, or 
warning, or hopefulness, never counting 
any too low or too great to receive the 
word of life. There is no better life for this 
world or heaven than His, "who came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister." 

" Wherefore, be ye steadfast, unmova- 
ble, always abounding in the work of the 
Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your 
labor is not in vain in the Lord." 



"that shall he reap. 207 

" Now He that ministereth bread for 
your food, multiply your seed sown, 
and increase the fruits of your righteous- 
ness." 

" Now the God of peace, who brought 
again from the dead the Great Shepherd 
of the sheep with the blood of the eternal 
covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you 
perfect in every good thing to do His 
will, working in us that which is well-pleas- 
ing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to 
whom be the glory forever and ever. 
Amen." 



208 SOWING AND REAPING. 

Sow with a generous hand; 

Pause not for toil or pain; 
Weary not through the heat of summer, 

Weary not through the cold spring rain; 

For the sheaves of golden grain. 

Scatter the seed and fear not, 

A table will be spread; 
What matter if you are too weary 

To eat your hard-earned bread. 
Sow while the earth is broken, 

For the hungry must be fed. 

Sow; — while the seeds are lying 
In the warm earth's bosom deep, 

And your warm tears fall upon it, 
They will stir in their quiet sleep; 

And the green blades rise the quicker, 
Perchance, for the tears you weep. 

Then sow; — for the hours are fleeting, 
And the seed must fall to-day; 

And care not what hands shall reap it 
Or if you shall have passed away, 

Before the waving cornfields 
Shall gladden the sunny day. 

Sow; and look onward, upward, 
Where the starry light appears, — 

Where in spite of the coward's doubting 
Or your own heart's trembling fears, 

You shall reap in joy the harvest 
You shall have sown to-day in tears. 

— Adelaide Procter. 



A PRAYER FOR THE HARVEST. 209 

Oft as Thy word, O God, is cast, 

Like seed into the ground, 
Let the rich dews of heaven descend, 

And righteous fruits abound. 

Let not the ever watchful foe 

This holy seed remove, 
But give it strength to root and grow, 

And ever fruitful prove. 

Let not the world's deceitful cares 

The living word destroy, 
But may it, free from hindering tares, 

Bring forth life's purest joy. 

O speed Thy message here to-night 

To every listening soul; 
And fill each heart with heavenly light, 

And strength to reach life's goal. 

The seed is Thine, and Thine the power 

To give it great increase, — 
O send us now a gracious shower 

Of faith and love and peace! 






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